


The Circle and The Flame

by Nightmare



Series: Magneto's Raiders [2]
Category: Marvel (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Bigotry, F/M, Gen, Racist Language, Sexual Slavery, Slavery, Torture, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:24:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 51,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2846024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightmare/pseuds/Nightmare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Red Skull replaced Captain America after WWII, Mutants replaced Jews as the Enemy of the American Reich. A Mutant's only legitimate role in society was Slave, Concubine, Hound, or in a Grave. Kurt Wagner and Kitty Pryde made it through the torment of Hound Training, with the ultimate goal of assaulting the rebel Mutants in their very stronghold, only to find refuge at last. The ex-Hound's arrival at the Asteroid triggers a chain reaction of events that begin to take the story out into the greater Marvel Comicverse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kurt – Role Reversals.

**Author's Note:**

> This story builds on the events of The Shadow and The Kat, so it contains serious Spoilers. Please read that story first.

ACT 1

 

_In an alternate Marvel Earth, the Red Skull replaced Captain America after WWII. Rising to the heights of power in his stolen identity, the Skull created an America, and a world, after his own fascist image, with Mutants replacing the Jews as the Enemy of Right Thinking people. Mutants are killed or sterilized on apprehension, and kept alive only if they prove to be of some use. Brute labor, brainwashed assassins, and sexual playthings are but a few of the roles in which they ‘serve’ society._

_Xavier’s dream was murdered, and Magus’s nightmare proven only too true. A small group of Mutants fight against the might of the Skull’s Shield organization, in a resistance force known as Magneto’s Raiders. Many others who might have been heroes were prevented from achieving such distinction by various means. The Mutants we know of as the X-Men are older, and the parents of teenagers just finding their own powers._

_Nightcrawler and Shadowcat are among the younger generation, but they have been through far more than the others kids can imagine. They were reft from their lives and taken aboard the Shield Heli-Carrier. The Carrier is a floating gulag and training facility for the Hounds; tamed Mutant killers in the service of Shield. The two found each other, and for reasons they couldn’t understand, were allowed to form a romantic relationship. They finally learned they were meant to destroy the Raiders, but through luck, and love, they fail… but succeed in finding refuge and escape._

_Kurt and Kitty’s acceptance among the inhabitants of Asteroid M, the Raider’s fortress, unleashes a chain of events that results in revealed secrets, and more than one family being reunited. As the dust settles, plans and preparations are being made for the Raider’s next campaign…_

* * *

Kurt slipped into the darkened training room before the first class he and Kitty were to teach. He stopped beside the equipment table, and shuddered. Here he was, and now _he_ was the trainer… Would what happened to him, to Kätzchen and he, be reflected onto these children? He crouched in the dimness and wrapped his knotted string rosary around his trembling fist. He’d agreed to this… yes, it made sense for them to pass on their combat knowledge to the other teens, but… but… It sickened him to think of himself in the role of Trainer. His head shook emphatically in the shadows. _Nein._ He would not… _could_ not call himself ‘trainer’. Teacher? Hmm… no bad memories… but no resonance, either. Instructor. _Ja…_ That had a ring to it, and he could accept that title.  Please, _Gott…_

“Kurt?” His lady’s voice came from the doorway.

“By the table,” he called to her, and looked to her to show the lambent glow of his eyes.

She felt her way along, coming to him like an answered prayer. She knelt before him and caressed his scarred cheeks of silky down. “What are you doing here in the dark?”

“Thinking. Praying. Will you pray with me?” He took her hands at her ready nod and held them with his.

“Dear _Gott_ , your servants call on you. We have been entrusted to guide these young souls, and the only path we know is that of evil. Help us stand firm and lead by example, and not by intimidation and fear. Let compassion be the basis of our teachings. Amen.”

“Amen.” Kitty leaned forward and kissed him. “I think you worry too much.”

His golden eyes widened, “Do I? Could you call yourself a ‘trainer’, without a qualm?” She flinched, and his hands tightened on hers, and stroked up her arms to draw her closer to him. “I’m sorry, _liebe_.” He hugged her tightly, and then drew her to her feet, because the others were approaching.

“I’m sure we’ll be alright,” she said. She tucked her Star of David necklace inside her suit collar and he put his sacred bit of string in his belt pouch.

“Anybody home?” Mack called from the doorway.

“You know we are, Mack,” Kurt said. The boy’s nose was almost as good as his old man’s, according to what they’d been told.

“Yeah,” Mack said. “Shield your eyes, I’m gonna turn on the lights.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Kitty said, as she and Kurt squinted in the sudden brightness.

“I coulda just flipped the switch, ya know.” His white toothy smile contrasted with his mocha face. Warren made faces behind his friend’s back.

“Is this the place?” Jimmy asked. Becky looked past him in curiosity. All the children were taught basic defense and physical education, but this was her first time in one of the Asteroid’s combat rooms. It must have been a disappointment, because her face fell as she lost the expectant look.

Kitty handed out manuals to the class. “These books are on Combat Anatomy. When you fight you need to know where to hit an opponent in order to stun, to injure, or if necessary, to kill.” There was a strained look on her face, and Kurt remembered a book like this in Kitty’s trunk.

“You are responsible for this information,” Kurt said, picking up a notebook. “Being a Raider, should you ever achieve that status, often means going into combat, so you will be tested on this, both in examinations and in practicals.” He handed them each a sheet detailing their new workout regimes. Ignoring the groans of complaint, he continued. “Be happy you are not Hounds, or those schedules would be mandatory, and harder. We will not enforce them; the only consequences for not keeping up on your exercises are simply that you will not make the permanent team as soon as you might, if ever. It’s up to you. Any questions?”

There weren’t any, and Kitty nodded. “Let’s warm up. It’s crucial to prevent injury during your work.” Kurt went into his limbering routine, watching his _liebe_ as she and the others went through their own stretches. He caught himself holding back on reflex, and stopped abruptly. “Kurt?” Kitty said with concern in her voice.

He smiled into her eyes. “I just realized… when we were forced to do this, I would reserve as much effort as I could, even at the end when we were together again. I didn’t want to give them my best efforts. Now, I answer to no-one but _Gott_ , and I have no reason to hold back any more.” He leaped into his routine once more; pushing and reaching for his utmost limits and struggling to surpass them. He was always a man who reveled in physical activity, and this was as close to pure freedom as he had ever experienced, except on the circus trapeze.

Kurt was sweating freely and panting when he finished, but he was grinning so hard his face hurt. Kitty applauded, impressed, and he bowed deeply. “ _Wunderbar!_ That felt so good. Your turn, _liebe_. Do it like you mean it.” He was partly aware of their audience, but this moment of realization was for them, first and foremost.

She danced like a dervish. At times Kitty’s hands were open and empty, and at other times razor edges glinted in her grasp. Her blades were a part of her now. Without them, he knew, she felt helpless and vulnerable… a weak slip of a girl up against ravening monsters. But with them, she could go toe to toe with the baddest monster of them all, the Wolverine, and nearly take him down. She was a deadly as she was beautiful, and now she was as free. They both were.

“Whoa…” Warren’s breathless tone seemed to sum it up for all of them.

Kitty stood still, breathing hard when she finished, tears flowing freely down her tattooed face. Kurt went to her, arms stretched to embrace her. She moved to come into his arms, and then flinched when he hesitated at the sight of the naked blades she still held in her hands. “Kurt… I’m a killer… I didn’t know they were still out…” She fumbled to put them away, crying all the harder. She dropped one, but caught it before it reached the ground in a move that would have made Pete Maximoff proud. When it was safely stowed, he gathered her close in his arms. “ _Nein_ Kätzchen, you are a warrior, and sometimes warriors have to kill. But they will regret giving you those weapons, because cats are notorious for turning their claws back on their masters.”

She giggled faintly against his chest. “But what about you?”

He smiled into her hair, “It is well known that Dark Elven princes do not take well to slavery, _liebe_.” He let her go with a kiss on the cheek, and turned back to their curious students.

“Have you ever killed, Kurt?” Mack asked.

“No. That wasn’t what they trained me for. I had the training in theory, but I was primarily an infiltration specialist… but enough about us!” He referred to his notes to busy his shaking hands. “Warren, you have been reported to have uncontrolled telekinesis, and flashes of insight into people that could only come from a kind of mind-reading. _Herr_ Leader thinks you will focus more on the Kinesis side, due to the red-glow you manifest when it’s operating. He speculates you will not be quite as dexterous as your mother, and without quite the punch of your father. However, that compromise means you can do things that neither of them could.”

“Wait, Dad’s not a teke,” Warren said.

Kurt shook his head. “Cyclop’s force beams are undeniably kinetic in nature. Perhaps he can’t manipulate things with them like Psion, but they both share an ability to move objects at a distance, without heat.”

Jimmy looked off, his face shining with the eerie gleam of his spiritual abilities. “Charles says that sounds about right, Warren. Your late Uncle Alex also had kinetic powers… a blast of concentric rings, but fully controlled…” His green eyes snapped open as the spectral sign faded. “I didn’t know _Herr_ Summers had brain damage.”

“He does not!” Warren said hotly.

“Warren…” Mack said.

The redhead glared at him, then sighed. “Yeah, I know, but he didn’t have to make it sound like that.”

“All I meant,” Jimmy said mildly, “was that he cannot turn off his powers. _Herr_ Professor knew this, and traced it to a traumatic accident when your father was a boy. It was the Professor’s efforts that discovered the ruby quartz lenses that enable him to see without endangering people.”

Kurt looked at Kitty, “When we did we lose them?”

She smiled a little. “You mean we ever had them?” She perched on the table next to Becky. “You, Mack, show a sensitivity to electrical fields along with a considerable immunity to its effects. Jon thinks you could be struck by a full lightning bolt and scarcely notice. However, your mother has been understandably reluctant to allow that to be put to the test.” Mack returned her smile, and shrugged. “You’re also a skilled bare-knuckled brawler,” she continued. “You might yet manifest a set of claws, and you are to report any soreness of your forearms.”

Watching him absently rub along his forearms, Kurt took a guess. “Or at least tell us how long they’ve been sore…”

The gray haired boy stopped mid-rub. “Um, a couple of months now, but I also get sore all over.” He shrugged again. “It feels better when I’m near Ilyana.” His dusky face reddened at this admission, and his best friend elbowed him in the side, grinning. “Shut up, Warren.” He faked an elbow back, and Warren dodged, shielding his ribs.

Jimmy looked thoughtful. “Something, _mein buder_?” Kurt inquired.

“Ilyana has an incoherent magical field around her. Charles Xavier says sometimes it happens that magic and mutation will manifest in the same person, as I know from personal experience,” Jimmy put a hand on his chest. “Dr. Stephen Strange wonders how Mack would respond to a fully formed magical aura.”

Kitty raised an eyebrow, and jotted a note. “Something to look into, but not right now. Jimmy, we know your powers let you talk to the Dead and manifest their powers. Besides that you’re trained a sorcerer.” She turned to Becky, “You have your limited shape changing, and a good measure of your father’s physical adaptations and fighting abilities.” She looked at Kurt.

He picked up his cue. “Our job is to train what you have, and help you manifest what you have in potential. As such, we will be pushing you beyond what you thought your limits were, because it is only when you are stretched that you will grow. So, here are your assignments,” He handed out pages to each of their friends and merely grinned when they groaned in complaint.”

“I’m not an acrobat, brother,’ Jimmy complained.

“Perhaps not,” Kurt answered, “But we are soldiers in this war, and that requires a level of conditioning that life with the Gypsies couldn’t give you. I know that I was more conditioned than you when I was taken, and I was pushed far beyond my boundaries by means that often terrified me. You only need do what you wish, Jimmy. I won’t be threatening you with any harm.”

“Harm? Brother, are you joking?” Kurt just looked back at him, his face completely serious.

Kitty shook her head. “’Terror’ is the correct word for their training methods.” She went over to Kurt. “So what kind of weights set do you have for us?”

“I was thinking of this,” he said, handing her a slip.

She skimmed it, and looked at him sternly. “Sadist.”

“No pain, no gain, _liebe_!” he said, smiling.

She snorted, and went into the workout with him. He kept an eye on their students, who looked less than enthused at the workout ahead of them. His enhanced hearing did pick up some comments that if the instructors were working so hard, they might as well see what they could do.

Kurt and Kitty finished their work, and stretched again, cooling down. Then they sat and observed the others, making comments on their performances. “Careful Warren, you almost messed up your hair,” Kitty said. She mimed an arrogant hair flip.

“You’re perilously close to breaking a sweat, brother,” Kurt teased.

“So why aren’t you over here, yelling at us instead of making snide comments?” Becky snapped. “That’s what drill instructors are supposed to do.”

“Ah, but that’s exactly the point,” Kurt said. “Drill instructors work with people who are committed to being soldiers. The four of you have merely indicated you _might_ be interested in being Raiders. You can leave any time you like. There’s the door.”

“What about you?” Mack asked. “Why are you doing this?”

Kitty looked down. “To keep innocent kids like you from being treated like we were. Whether we like it or not, we have to be in this war. Neither of us will rest until we’ve fallen or won.”

“She speaks for you?” Warren asked Kurt.

Kurt nodded. “Win or die? Yes. We are in this until mutants can be free to live how they wish. Until mutants will no longer be treated as we were, like animals. They called us ‘Hounds’ for a reason.”

Warren leaned against the wall, and shook his head skeptically. “How bad could it have been?”

Kurt felt ice trickle through his veins… _“How bad…?”_ He stared at the redhead.

 _Chunk!_ A lock of fiery hair fluttered to the floor, and Warren put a hand up to a fine slice on his cheek, where a drop of blood started to bead. Kitty stalked over to him and reached past Warren to yank the dirk out of the wall. Furious brown eyes stared up into shocked hazel. “You don’t have a clue, Summers! How dare you?” she hissed. “We were tortured… and… raped! And yet you stand there and say, ‘How bad could it be?’ Bastard.” She stormed out of the room, slotting the blade back into her wrist sheath.

“The bitch cut me!” Before Warren could blink, Kurt’s fists slammed into the wall on either side of his face.

He snarled at Warren, yellow eyes blazing. “You will never, _ever_ refer to my wife in such a manner again! You want to know how bad it was? Fine. The four of you will report here tomorrow, this same time. No excuses! We will tell and show you exactly what we went through.” He went after his lady, the fine fur on the back of his neck still bristling. He found her in a nearby storeroom, stewing silently. “Shhh, _liebe,_ ” he said, pulling her against him. “We will show them what really happened, tomorrow.”

She laid her face on his chest. “I can’t. I can’t… live through all that again,” she whispered dully.

“You can and you will, _mein schatz_. They deserve to know the truth of the world they live in, outside this sheltered refuge.” she nodded against him, and he settled down to hold her until her composure returned.

* * *

The next day Kurt and Kitty arrived at the combat room. The kids were waiting for them, including a sulking Warren, who rubbed at a small bandage on his cheek. The redhead gave Kitty a poisonous look, which she ignored.

“I can’t believe my folks made me come here,” Warren muttered.

Mack gave him a quelling look, “You were outta line, and they agreed.”

Kurt cleared his throat. “After the Carrier attacked the Asteroid, Cyclops went on a mission to raid their computer files while the vessel was close. Among the data copied were our Hound records. We will begin with pictures of us before we were… processed.” A screen had been set up on the wall, and Kitty’s Eighth grade graduation photo, Valedictorian, was displayed. She looked gangly and underdeveloped, her eyes almost too large for her face. “Kätzchen, at age 13.” The next photo was new to both of them; her freshman year photos were delivered after her arrest. She was a little more developed in this picture, her long hair in another style. “At age 14.”

The next picture showed Kitty, collared and bound in heavy shackles at the school assembly, her loose brown curls shorn to stubble, and baggy coveralls hanging on her slumped frame. “That was two weeks later,” he said. “And this was the next day.” Kitty looked away from the next one. The post-marking photo wasn’t flattering. Her face was swollen and lumpy, even bruised in some areas, the ink driven deep into the raw flesh.

“Just after the tattoo, I was given a tubal ligation. I was put under, because it’s internal surgery. Sterilization is the first thing they do when you get to the Carrier,” Kitty said.

“Now for me,” Kurt said. The next image was a hand drawn advertisement for the Circus, showing an exaggerated drawing of Kurt. “This is all that Shield had of me; Mama provided these photos.” A picture appeared of Kurt and Jimmy with their arms about each other’s shoulders, wearing similar clothes, and identical grins and gold hoop earrings. The next was a close up of their happy expressions, showing the unscarred lines of Kurt’s face. “I was 15.”

The next photo showed Kurt, his hair clipped short, unconscious, and quite nude. His genitals were blurred, but the extreme bondage and humiliating position was very clear. He still appeared unclothed in the post-scarring picture, his bare chest revealed to the camera along with the oozing cuts on his face. “Just after that photo was taken, “Kurt said in a flat voice, “they swabbed my scrotum with alcohol and gave me a vasectomy. With no anesthesia; luckily I fainted half-way through.” The three other male teens squirmed in their seats, and Becky winced.

“And now it is movie time,” Kurt said. “They filmed our practice sessions, no doubt to evaluate our progress.” There were clips of Kurt kneeling, reciting the Shield oath to the image of the Eagle. “They made us do that, pounding it into our brains. The only thing that preserved me is the fact the church got there first. I learned to say those things with my lips, while reciting prayers in German in my heart. They thought they had me, but what was in my heart was deeper and truer than they could reach.”

Kitty spoke over scenes of her learning the oath. “One thing they emphasized was that just being discovered to be an active mutant was a death sentence. We didn’t have to have done anything wrong; we existed and that was enough. The only thing that kept us alive from day to day was doing everything they said. If at anytime we failed their expectations… we’d be killed. We were in the Carrier. Kurt’s powers and mine could let us escape, but to where? Usually we were thousands of feet up… although some days that seemed like the most attractive way to stop the pain.”

“I was trained to fight, but not specifically to kill,” Kurt said. “I was to get in and out of places. They had arbitrary goals set for my powers, and they used any means they saw fit to ensure I reached them.” Clips showed Kurt being threatened if he didn’t perform to expectations, of the trainers firing rubber, and then real bullets as motivations. Images were shown of Kurt puking his guts out, of blood pouring from his nose, and of him shaking so badly after a session he couldn’t stand.

“Me, they wanted to learn to kill,” Kitty said with her teeth clenched. “Anatomy lessons and target practice were all well and good, but they wanted to give me the actual experience.” The screen showed the entire session with Ox, from the very real threat of her molestation by the big mutant, to her attempted murder of him after she got him down. “That’s where it all came together for me,” she said bitterly. “I learned I could use what they gave me to protect myself, but they weren’t ready for me to kill, yet…”

“Understand,” Kurt said, “that Hounds also do labor in the Carrier. We do things like cleaning, laundry, and garbage, for five hours a day each weekday, and ten hours each on Saturday and Sunday. Training time is an extra five hours every day during the week.”

“Male and female Hounds are segregated,” Kitty said. “The lower ranked Hounds only get one chance a month to even see a mutant of the opposite sex. They call these opportunities ‘Socials’. If you’ve been a good Hound, they provide food, drink, and music… and opportunities for sex. I first met a Kurt at a Social.” She gave her husband a thin smile.

“Is that where you two… got together?” Mack said, his expression hinting he meant intimacy.

Identical expressions of outrage and anger turned on him. “ _Nein!_ ” Kurt snapped. “We just talked, and danced, away from the rest of them. I had my own rooms, instead of the gang dorms, because my bunkmates liked to beat me.” His tail thrashed in the air as his fangs showed briefly.

Kitty continued. “The next time we met was right after my run in with Ox. I was pretty out of it, and he brought me back with a kiss.”

“A moment, _liebe_.” Kurt paused to kiss her. Catching his breath, he went on. “The next month, at our third meeting, it was I who needed the comforting. I had just participated in the mission that orphaned young Melanie, and I was heart sick at the thought that I was partly responsible for her death.”

Mack leaned forward. “I was on the shuttle for that one. Storm… my Mom made the weather foggy. Warren’s folks found her inside the condo, while Dad and I kept an eye on the Shield team on the other building. We didn’t know they had a Hound with them.”

“That explains much to me,” Kurt said. “I sensed that the weather alteration was odd… and I saw a red light moving in the fog.” He smiled faintly. “Very like the one that shows behind your father’s goggles, Warren.” He shook his head. “If I had known the Raiders were so close… But it wouldn’t have mattered, I could not have left Kitty to them, even then.”

Kitty leaned her head on his arm, briefly, then kissed over the scar of one of his bullet creases. “When he felt better, we… indulged in a little heavy petting. It was then that things changed for us. We fell asleep together, and missed our work shifts the next morning.” The screen showed two separate pictures of them both in an examination room, obviously terrified.

“ _Mein Gott_ , Kurt! What did they do to you?” Jimmy said.

Kurt gave him a crooked smile. “It seemed that ultimately their biggest problem was that we’d only petted each other. So they bid us to have intercourse for them.” At their gasps, his smile turned bitter. “We didn’t know that they filmed it… and before you ask, we’re not showing it to you. It is enough to know it’s a nice pornographic film of two mutant teens and their respective first times having sex… in front of an audience of Shield officers.”

Kitty’s voice turned icy. “But they were thoughtful enough to solve the problem of how I’d explain Kurt to my folks by sending them a copy of the event. Nothing like the first sign they have of their daughter in months be a film of her losing her virginity to a fuzzy blue elf and screaming his name in ecstasy.”

Jimmy raised an eyebrow at Kurt, who was torn between masculine pride, and sympathy for his lady’s discomfort. Becky nudged Kitty, who sighed. “Not that you should care, sis, but yes, he’s just that good.”

“Kätzchen!” He flushed in embarrassment, but he saw a wicked little glint in her brown eyes. The others were giving him odd looks, but there were worse things than having a reputation as a love god.

“Anyway,” his Kätzchen continued, “after that we were allowed to live together in his quarters. The only thing that enabled us to get through being forced to be together like that was that he proposed to me.” She held up her left hand, with the bit of twine on her ring finger. “But though we were okay together, some of our trainers started approaching us sexually.”

“Hounds are not allowed to say ‘no’, to _anything_ ,” Kurt told them. “Looming death is a Hound’s constant companion, and in our case, our failures would be taken out on the other. We could refuse nothing they chose to do, even our rapes… always being conscious that a single failure would be the end of us.”

“And don’t think that it would have been a clean end,” Kitty said matter-of-fact, the hint of humor fleeing from her again. “They… research mutants up there. Trying to figure out what makes us tick, I guess. They experiment on washed out Hounds, and they prefer not to wait for them to be dead first, either. Kurt and I… we had a mutual friend. He’d gone to the Social before the one where we met, and talked with her awhile. She was also my Bunkie, and set us up for our ‘date’.” She closed her eyes and made a visible effort to calm the trembling in her voice.

“She… washed out. I don’t know how, exactly. The important thing is, they framed Wolverine for her failure in a bid to bring me fully under their control. It came perilously close to working, because I started to hate him for that.”

“My dad?” Mack said. “I mean, it’s something he would do, but he hasn’t fought a Hound that I know of.”

“I know that, now,” Kitty said. “But they let me think he was responsible, so I would really try to kill him.”

“As if,” Warren said disbelievingly.

Mack turned to face his friend. “Warren, that knife that nicked your cheek? She buried one just like it completely in Dad’s gut. Only the fact that your parents were bouncing half the storage bay off her head kept her from giving him a serious problem, and he said as much. Dad was impressed, even if he wasn’t too happy about the way Kurt beat up my mom.”

“I did apologize,” Kurt said.

Warren stood, “They did what? And they’re being allowed to stay here?”

Becky sneered at him. “Boy, you are so thick. Haven’t you been listening? Seeing this? That wasn’t a summer camp they were at. And don’t you think that both your mom and Jon have mentally examined them? Shield mind-fucked them something fierce.”

Jimmy raised his eyebrows at the obscenity, and Kurt frowned in disapproval.

“He’s not thick,” Kitty said tiredly. “Just really sheltered. So… Karla washed out, like I said, and I was given the option to give her a clean end, as opposed to letting her get… experimented on to death. Once they had shown me proof, I accepted.”

“No! I won’t listen to you anymore!” Warren turned to leave, and nearly walked into his mother, standing in the doorway.

“Warren, sit down and shut up. We don’t run away from difficult truths,” Jean said.

“Mom?” Warren said, disbelief on his face.

Jean pushed him back to his chair. “Let them finish. You need to hear this.”

Kitty pressed the remote at the screen, and selected mutant research sequences were shown, pre and post mortem. Then Kitty’s qualification session began playing. It showed her walking the room where Karla was strapped up like a sacrifice, her hands running over her complement of blades, and quivering with tension. Showing Karla’s wounds, they could hear the conversation between the Hounds, as Karla asked her to make it quick. Kitty told her to close her eyes, so she wouldn’t flinch. Shadowcat squared off, and threw her pattern cleanly; heart, left eye, right eye, and throat. She was as white as a ghost afterwards, but she kept her composure, at least while she was on camera, even while retrieving and cleaning her knives.

His _liebe_ shuddered in reaction, and Kurt gathered her close. “They let us stay together, as a couple, for most of a year,” he said. “Then a shift of personnel caused everything to change again. We were kept apart for three months. See what that time did to us.”

Clips of their training for the months they were parted showed on the screen. Week by week, the pair looked increasingly haunted and gaunt. It was clear that they were losing it, and the way they flinched away from their trainer’s touch was very telling. “Our trainers were allowed to do as they wished to us during this time. At the end, I think I was cracking up, and Kätzchen had a bad case of ulcers. Just what every well-trained assassin needs… When we were given the Georgia Compound mission, we barely recognized each other.” Film showed of them preparing for the mission, stealing desperate glances at each other when they thought they could.

He squeezed his lady and kissed her hair. “They let us be together again after that, preparing us for the mission against the Asteroid. I suppose they thought they had broken us completely, and that we’d be grateful… but they were wrong. We were more determined to be free than ever.”

Kitty straightened up, her brown eyes so cold they were almost black. “The only other people I’ve killed were in defense of someone I cared about," she looked at Kurt, "or to protect innocents. You’ve seen my marksmanship, Summers. Believe me, I could have done much more than give you a hair trim and draw a few drops of blood.” She nodded at Kurt, and left the room along with Jean.

Kurt stood. “All these records are available for you to see for yourselves, except the sexual material. At least you can keep that much of your innocence. But think on this Warren, now how bad do you think it was?”

As he turned to follow the woman he loved, Kurt saw a look of dawning comprehension and horror come over Warren’s face, as the reality of what the former Hounds had suffered shredded his complacency. He smiled as the door closed behind him. The boy just had a rude shock, but Kurt thought Warren would come around nicely. He’d make a good Raider, someday.


	2. Jimmy - Objects At Rest

Jimmy contemplated the art before him. His love's eyes were purest amethyst, with a ring of warm gold rays just by the pupil. Her left iris had a small blue island in the sea of purple, but the right did not. He looked through his soft color pencils, trying some of the blues out on a bit of scratch paper before risking one on the portrait proper. He had depicted her eyes before, but not with this medium. With an application of a wet brush to the pencil work, the lines would melt and flow together like watercolor paints.

His easel was set in the solarium of the Asteroid's Garden. The large rocky chamber was bright with redirected solar light, and filled with foliage tenderly managed by Ororo. The glass walls of his shelter kept out the mists that kept the plants healthy and fragrant. Dion would like this place; she adored flowers and natural surroundings. Jimmy's throat choked up painfully at the thought of her. He put down his pencil and wiped away the burning moisture from his eyes. Sleep... had been difficult for him lately.

She came to him in the night, often in tears, and he so wanted to comfort and protect her. They were only silent phantoms to each other, ghostly and immaterial. With never a word or a touch, they had come to mean the world to each other, or so he hoped. She meant everything to him, and she always seemed so glad to see him. But there was sorrow in her eyes in the morning, when his waking meant they had to part. She was a Mutant, in the custody of Shield, so she had much to be sad about. Her shadow lay over everything he did, and everyone he met. None ever compared to her for him.

Jimmy watched her grow from a fey wisp of a girl with spiky black hair to a breathtaking beauty with a long ebon mane. He assumed he'd changed as much over the years as they visited each other. She was why he was a Sorcerer. Logic couldn't explain her, but when he became skilled and powerful enough to delve into the realm of the Spirits, he didn't find her there, either. Not even Margali could tell him the source of Dion's visitations, but his grandmother did say she was Jimmy's soul mate. As if he needed the Mistress of the Winding Way to tell him what he already knew. It was clear to him, that if he never found her, he would never find anyone.

They couldn't speak to each other, but over the years they found ways to communicate. That was how he knew her name; she formed the letters of dream stuff until he realized what they signified. He showed her he was called James in the same manner. He saw it on her lips when she greeted him. Their language was formed of images, rebuses, and painstaking words, formed letter for letter. Still, there were many concepts that couldn't be conveyed by the means available to them. With his eidetic memory and unique brain structure he could read while he slept, but that didn't really help, because like most people, she couldn't. He composed whole sonnets to her, but she couldn't read them when they were together, nor remember them well enough to understand when she woke. Some word, like 'yes', 'no', 'stop', and 'go' were iconic enough they worked as symbols in and of themselves, so she could use them, but it wasn't enough. Jimmy collected drawings that preserved all the ideas she tried to get across to him. Some he understood, and others were puzzles yet to be solved.

The majority of his work were studies of the woman who consumed him, in every possible facet. Pictures in black and white or color showed her dressed or nude, in whole or in part. The one he was making now was a close up of her upper face, focusing on her gem-like eyes. Putting his pencils away, he wet the end of a fine paintbrush, as Ororo gathered up the winds outside the solarium and made it rain. The pattering drops beat on the panes of his shelter as he carefully blended the colors he'd applied. Some adjacent elements were combined, while others had to be kept separate; the gold rays shouldn't be lost in either the purple iris or the black of the pupil. The shade of Peter Rasputin stood near him, watching with careful attention.

< _I like those pencils_ ,> the big Russian said, a hint of wistfulness in his voice.

"So do I, Peter," Jimmy said. He finished up what he was doing as the gentle rainfall ended, and packed his tools away.

Ororo opened the solarium door. "Hello Jimmy, I saw you painting. May I see your work?"

Jimmy hesitated, embarrassed. "I... uh... You see, _Frau_ , most of my work is very personal to me..." Her eyebrow rose in surprise, but she inclined her head in understanding. "I'll make it up to you," he promised.

"That isn't necessary," she said. "I was merely curious."

He smiled, "But how can I not do, 'The Goddess in the Garden'? She blushed, as he went on. "I'm sure your husband will like it."

"If you want to, Jimmy. I will not refuse." He could see her smiling after him as he hurried to his room. He needed to put his art supplies away and get ready for his gym time.

* * *

The four Raider trainees were just doing their weight workouts for how, as they and their instructors cooled off from the recent confrontation. Warren wanted to apologize, but Kurt said Kitty wasn't ready to hear it yet. As Jimmy entered the gym he saw it wasn't just the four of them today. Steve Rogers and Raven Darkholme both needed to regain the fitness each recently lost. As he worked, Jimmy watched Becky watch them from across the room, and became aware of an undercurrent of tense hostility between her parents.

The Captain was always polite, but that courtesy had a certain stiffness to it when he spoke to Raven, and in return, she kept him at a suspicious distance. When she dropped a weight, Raven snapped at him in anger when he picked it up for her.

Becky sighed, and he put his hand on her shoulder in sympathy. She said, "I wish they would stop that. I know they don't like each other, but they can make an effort to be civil to each other, can't they?"

Steve had turned away from Raven with a faint offended expression, but when Jimmy touched his daughter familiarly, he adopted a look of _Parental Concern_. Amusingly enough, it was nearly identical to the one that Raven was wearing at the moment. Jimmy laughed. "Maybe they have more in common that they realize," he told her. "And in my experience with a passionate people, sparks of anger often conceal flames of passion."

Becky threw him an incredulous look. "Them? They have absolutely nothing in common, about anything."

"Except you," Jimmy said. He changed to another piece of equipment.

Becky shrugged. "Yeah, well, I don't think that's nearly enough to bridge that gap. I'll be happy if they can agree to stop sniping at each other."

"I can understand his annoyance," Jimmy said. "He feels like he was used, and I'm sure you can understand, too. But what is her problem?"

"She won't say," Becky said. "But I get the feeling that she's afraid that he'll try to take custody of me away from her, or something like that."

"Maybe you can ask someone to arbitrate that they both respect to help them work out their issues," Jimmy said. "Logan, maybe."

"That's a good idea," she said. She gave him a quick hug, and bounced from the room. Steve was still giving him a stern look as Jimmy finished his own workout and went to shower.

* * *

That evening Jimmy went with his brother and Kitty to a different dining room. They were going to see some people the former Hounds encountered in their time as Hounds. He was introduced to the Russell family; mother Suzanne, son Duncan, and daughter Rose. The father, a man named Dennis, was still in a wheelchair, but Suzanne was hopeful of his full recovery. "Hello, Jimmy," she said, and then hugged Kurt and Kitty. "The two of you look so much better now. I'm so happy that you got away from Shield."

"So are we, Kitty said. "I'm... I'm still sorry about... Emily." Her hands twitched in a way Jimmy learned meant she was thinking about her blades.

"You did what you had to, Kitty," Suzanne said. "I forgive you."

Kurt fidgeted, and crouched down to hug the little girl. Rose's face lit up "Funny man!" she said.

"His name is _Mr. Tails_ ," piped a young voice from behind Jimmy. He turned to see that Kurt's young admirer Melanie had followed them, fuzzy blue doll firmly tucked under her arm, jealous frown on her face.

" _Liebchen_ , I'd like you to meet another young friend of mine," Kurt said. Rose looked at Melanie, but her attention was quickly caught by what the other girl was holding.

"Mommy, can I have one of those?" Rose said, turning pleading eyes to Suzanne. Melanie clutched her toy possessively behind her.

Kurt smiled mischievously, and reached for a bag he carried. "Ah, my gypsy blood warned me of this, _liebchens_ , and I came prepared..." Out of the bag came another fuzzy topped blue moppet dressed in black. He barely had time to present it to Rose before the girl engulfed it in her embrace and cuddled it tenderly. This second simulacrum was Kurt-as-a-Raider, instead of Kurt-as-a-Hound. An 'M' adorned its beltline, and there was no 'H' stitched across the torso. She and Melanie were soon comparing the dolls when Kurt turned to Duncan.

"And you, little man, are too old for such a toy, _ja?_ " Kurt said, his mouth quirking in amusement. The boy looked as if he wasn't entirely sure about that, when Kurt handed him the bag. Duncan looked suspiciously inside, and smiled amazed as he dumped the contents on the table. There were a number of smaller articulated figures, of more normal proportions. He laid them out, and Jimmy saw well-worn renditions of Shield fighters and the Raiders, along with some newer figures. Kitty and Kurt were new additions, along with a man in a Nazi uniform with a red skull head. Both old and new was the figure of Captain America, who seemed to have been given a new head to allow him to join the good guy side.

"Most of those belonged to Mack," Kurt said. "When I asked Ororo to make another 'Mr. Tails' for Rose, she gave me the other toys, because Mack didn't play with them any more. Seems he's too busy trying to join the roster, these days." He ruffled the boy's hair, but Duncan was oblivious, already plotting out campaigns for his toy warriors.

"Thank you, Kurt," Suzanne said. "You're so good with children..." She gasped as her empathy reacted to the stabs of pain from all three of her visitors. Even Rose looked up, a sad frown on her face as she also picked up the emotions.

 _Oh, Dion_ , Jimmy thought.

"I'm sorry, I forgot," Suzanne said. "It's okay, Rosey, mommy just said something stupid." Rose shook her finger at her mother in mock seriousness, and then went back to playing with Melanie.

"It wasn't stupid," Kurt said, uncharacteristically subdued. "Unfortunate, perhaps." Kitty was still struggling to smooth out her expression, and her husband put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Suzanne looked thoughtful. "The children's center always needs volunteers," she said. "Sometimes parents want a little 'alone time'. You could sign up...?"

 _"Ja..."_ __ he said. "Jimmy and I often watched over the littles of the Gypsy camp. That was fun, wasn't it brother?" He smiled at Jimmy.

"Mostly," Jimmy said, and then he smiled back. They looked at Kitty.

"I... used to babysit," she said, her voice rough with suppressed emotion. The tight expression on her face melted slowly to a sad smile as she looked into Kurt's hopeful eyes. She hugged him, and then leaned back to face him. "It sounds like a good idea." Kurt picked her up and whirled her around, a broad grin breaking out across his face. She grinned weakly in return, hitting him playfully on the shoulder until he set her down again.

Suzanne motioned them away from the children. "Isn't there anything that can be done, medically?"

Kurt sighed. "They looked. Most of what Shield cut to sterilize me was removed. Even if the ends could be reconnected, there would not be... room for any comfort on my part.  The... tubes would be stretched so taut as to practically pull my testes out of my scrotum." Jimmy made a face, as Kurt continued. "I am informed it is not a pleasant condition." He sighed again. "I would gladly risk it, if they thought Kätzchen condition was repairable." Kitty buried her face into his shoulder, and he stroked her hair. "Since it is the female who bears, Shield takes extra pains with them. Not only were her tubes removed and thoroughly sealed, but her womb was... damaged. No medical procedure can reverse that."

Jimmy's eyes burned with sympathy. Their mother had been so looking forward to grandchildren. The same thing had been done to Dion, she'd showed him the scars after they'd captured her. His own fertility meant nothing without hers... if he ever found her.  She'd never been able to convey to him what her mutation was, but he knew that she was a "comfort woman" to a large corpulent Shield official; her beauty becoming her curse.

Pulling himself back to the present, Jimmy heard Suzanne saying that her two children wanted to visit the pool room, but she had to do something tonight.

"A pool? I love to swim," Kurt said. He looked at his lady. "Can we accompany them, _liebe?_ " She smiled her assent, as Melanie bounced over to them.

"Can I go, too?" Melanie said excitedly.

Kurt crouched down to her level. "Only if your minders agree, and they aren't upset that you followed us. I don't mind if you come, but they might be mad you snuck off."

"Will you help me?" she said hopefully, and Kurt took her hand to help her apologize to the couple that looked after the young orphan.

"What about you, Jimmy?" Kitty said. "Pool room, before late dinner?"

"I can't be there for right away," Jimmy said. "I have an appointment, myself. But I should be there for the hour before late dinner starts." He smiled, "I have to warn you, sister, he swims like an otter, and you already know what wet fur smells like."

She blushed, and play-hit him on the shoulder. He bowed to her and took his leave. He just had time to get to his fitting at the secret meeting.

* * *

"There you are, James, I was beginning to get worried," his mother said.

"I'm sorry," he apologized, knowing that she had indeed been concerned to call him 'James'. He donned his new suit, and the tailor checked the fit, the procedure overseen by Ororo. Jimmy's outfit looked alright he thought, it wasn't really his style, but one seldom choose what they wore while attending a wedding.

" _Frau_ Munroe?" he said. When she came over he gave her a slim notebook where he kept his sketches of people on the Asteroid. In it were studies of people, and detailed depictions of some of the rooms or views to be found here. Some were quick captures of his impressions of a person or area, and other pages were nearly finished works. The pleased look on her face was worth a little soul-baring. "The one in the middle," Jimmy said, "the one of Kurt and Kitty dancing? That will be my gift to them at the dedication. I got him talking about when they turned from friends to paramours, and the dancing seemed an important step."

"That will be wonderful, Jimmy. I know they will love it." She found some his sketches of her and smiled. "Logan would definitely like something like this," she said.

"Ah, but I still think I'll paint what I saw this morning," Jimmy said. "I just haven't had time to sketch it yet."

Suzanne Russell entered the room, checking behind her to see that she wasn't being followed. "Okay everyone, they're at the pool with Melanie and my kids."

Jon laughed, "That ought a keep them busy for awhile, so let's get serious planning this party." He got the gathering's attention. "You all know that Kurt and Kitty performed their own marriage, considering it sacred, but what they missed out on was celebrating it with family and friends. This surprise dedication ceremony will help them solemnize their union before their peers. Thank you all for your hard work." Everyone turned back to their task, and Jon sat down at a worktable. "Got 'em, Pete?"

"Right here, Uncle Jon," the silver-haired boy said, laying two knotted loops of twine on the table. Jon used a cone to determine the exact sizing of each ring, and began using Jean's telekinesis to make gold and platinum wires to twist about each other, emulating in metal the appearance of the twine rings. For Kitty's, he added a deep blue sapphire, and two small clear diamonds, held tight in the weave of metal.

The tailor had Jimmy change back to his regular clothes. He did, and hurried back to watch his father finish the new rings. "Put them back, Pete, before they notice." The boy nodded, and blur-ran out the door with the bits of knotted twine.

"I hope he doesn't run into anyone," Wanda said.

"Not a chance," Jon told her, tapping his head, indicating personal insight. "When he's at speed, everyone else looks like statues."

Jimaine and Ororo were working on the dedication clothes; a curious amalgam of Western formalwear and fancy Gypsy garb. Kurt's suit vest was colorfully embroidered, and instead of a cummerbund the outfit had a fringed sash. Kitty's gown was everything a young bride would wish for, with a dash of Romany flair.

"Jimmy," his mother said, "I brought his earrings. Be sure to wear the mate to this one." She held up a good hoop marked with sigils of good fortune.

"Yes, mama," he said. He saw Suzanne talking to Jean, who coordinated living assignments for the number of orphaned children that lived on the Asteroid. Suzanne gestured to him come over, and as he came up to them, he said, "Melanie gets along very well with Rose, now that they're on equal footing, toy-wise."

Suzanne gave him a surprised look, "How did you...?"

"I'm a Gypsy seer," he said. "Besides, what else what you be talking to Jean about? I do think it would be better for Melanie to be part of family instead of just being someone's assignment. But, do you think your husband will be able to keep up with another young child?"

Suzanne smiled. "Yes, he did want a bigger family." She winced. "I'm sorry, that's a sore subject with you, too, isn't it."

Jimmy just nodded. He knew Suzanne's empathy had picked up his pain earlier. Jean raised an eyebrow at him, but he just looked back at her. Let her think that his pain was only for his brother and Kitty's sake. No need to tell her what the source of his true feelings were.

< _James, you don't have to bear this pain alone_ ,> Charles said to him. < _They can help you if you just let them know you have a problem. Don't shut out your friends._ >

< _I can do this myself, Charles_ ,> Jimmy answered silently. < _It's too... personal._ > Jimmy could feel the Professor's disappointment, but the spirit didn't persist. Magnus and Stephen Strange also disapproved, which made it a clean sweep of his personal advisors, but he didn't care.

He said his goodbyes, and started to head off to the pool. Before he got out the door, Raven intercepted him. "May I speak with you, Mr. Szardos?"

Jimmy gave her a little bow. "Lady Darkholme, certainly. And call me Jimmy, please."

They found a quiet corner and she studied her hands before she looked up. "I want... I need to get him something for this celebration... but I don't know what. Your mother said I should ask you."

He looked into Raven's eyes and saw her sincerity. "My brother wants, more than anything, more than he wants to have his own family... he wants to know his origins. He knows now that you are his mother, but he wants to know who his father is, too."

Raven's eyes widened in surprise. "I... I'm not sure." She bit her lip and looked away. "I thought I knew him... he was so... charming. I was married to a Shield Administrator. It was safe, and I was willing to stay there indefinitely." Her smiled was crooked. "It was an easier life than always being on the run. But my husband wanted a family. Unfortunately, I think the man was infertile. I was desperate..." She sighed. "Ashton Zell[*] was on my husband's staff. I was drawn to him, drawn more than to anyone else I'd ever met. We had a torrid affair, and I conceived. I lost my shapechange when I gave birth, and you can guess what little Kurt looked like."

Jimmy nodded, encouraging her to go on. "I tried to find Ashton," she said. "But he was gone, and I had to run. I took the babe to the Gypsies that I'd gotten my rings from, and then I went back to look for my lover again..." She shook her head, her frustration still clear after all the intervening years. "Not only was he not there, but no-one even _remembered him_. It was as if he'd never been there at all, except for my memories and the child I'd left behind." She looked at Jimmy. "What do you suggest I do?"

Jimmy pulled out his sketchbook, and flipped it to a new page. "Describe him to me. I will draw what you remember, and we'll both sign the finished work. We'll title it with the only name that you knew him by, and it will make Kurt very happy."

She raised an arched eyebrow. "It will?"

" _Ja._ His father's face and name, as you knew him, is far more than he's ever had. Who the man really was, well, that's a mystery for another day."

She nodded, and began to describe a man she'd never been able to forget...

* * *

Jimmy finally made it to the pool with his swimwear. The two little girls were giggling in a corner, while Kurt was in the water, teaching Duncan how to hold his breath. Kurt looked like a drenched cat, as usual, and Kitty was having trouble hiding her amusement. Jimmy sat in the shallows next to his sister-in-law, and put a companionable arm around her shoulders. "That's my brother, swims like an otter; sheds like a cat."

"Mm hmm," she said. "I hope the filters are up to it."

"Hey, now," Kurt complained, tail splashing water at them.

"What the f... uh, heck is this blue crud in the water!" Logan growled, his loud Bermuda shorts revealing how hirsute he was. Half a dozen fingers pointed at Kurt, who affected an innocent " _who, me?_ " expression. "You gonna clean that stuff up?" Logan asked him, scowling.

" _Ja..._ " Kurt said, resigned to giving up his fun.

"Not until we leave," Kitty said. "And you should talk, Mr. Short and Hairy."

Logan crouched and fished up a soggy blue clump. "At least I don't shed like Bluefooted[**] here.

Kurt shrugged expressively, and went back to watching Duncan swim underwater. "Mr. Tails!" a pair voices cried out, as Melanie and Rose cannonballed on either side of him.

Kurt sputtered and wiped his face, then grinned and caught the two of them up in a big hug. " _Ach_ , nice to see you, too, _liebchens_ ," he purred as he made sure to shed copiously on each of them.

"Hey!" Rose said, and from there it degenerated into a game of catch-the-elf.

* * *

It was days later before the young couple was surprised with the ceremony. The beautiful clothing and all the efforts that everyone had made to pull off the occasion caused both of them to choke up. But Kurt and Kitty rose to the occasion, and there wasn't a dry eye in the audience when they reenacted the vows they made to each other, and explained the reasoning behind them. To the mixture of Christian and Jewish traditions, Jimaine added some Gypsy elements, as she called for blessings and good fortune upon them.

When Kurt kissed his wife to uproarious applause, it was time for the giving of gifts. Jimaine smiled at them, "Kurt, here are your earrings back. This is the one that matches Jimmy's." He turned his ear to her, and she quickly re-pierced it, and put on the gold hoop. "Kitty, I know you don't approve of magic, but I'd like you to have this ring of protection." She offered a delicate golden hoop with a Stars of David engraved on it. Kitty beamed, and allowed Jimaine to put it on her ear right away.

"Speaking of rings," Jon said, "I know you wear your twine on missions, but when you're home, maybe you can wear these." He gave them each a ring box with their partner's ring in it.

Kitty held up Kurt's wide band and started crying. "It's so beautiful." Kurt got down on one knee and pulled the string from her finger, and put the smaller band on her. She looked at the glittering gems still in tears, then tugged him to his feet, and gave him his own new ring.

Now it was Raven's turn. "Be sure to thank your brother, he helped me on this," she said hesitantly. She handed Kurt the wrapped portrait, and he took the paper off the portrait of a devilishly handsome man with a pointed goatee, and sparkling eyes. 'Ashton Zell' was carved into the frame, and Jimmy and Raven had both signed it. "This is your father, Kurt, as I knew him." It was Kurt's turn to weep, and he fiercely embraced his mother to her obvious embarrassment.

"My turn," Jimmy said. "The details probably aren't exact, but that's not the point here." He showed them a large portrait of the two of them dancing in Hound gray in a shabby candlelit room. A record player could be seen on a wire spool table, and worn blankets lined the walls, but what made the portrait come alive was the interaction between the two figures, as sexual tension oozed from them. Kurt's face bore a tender, if toothy smile, and Kitty's smile showed her shy interest, a blush obvious behind the tattoos.

" _Mein Gott_ , brother, it's beautiful! Here, look _liebe_ , a bottle of old spice on the ground, you can just make it out."

"And on the table, the record player has a mismatched arm," Kitty said. "And behind that... a ball of twine." She gave Jimmy a kiss. "It's all wrong, of course, but all the elements are just right, which makes it perfect. Thank you so much." Jimmy felt himself blush at the praise.

Logan stood up and reached into a pocket to pull out a letter. "Half-pint, yer folks are safe, and hopefully it'll stay that way. We found a way to get word to them about your freedom, and marriage. They got to see a photo, but they had to give it back, o' course; too dangerous to keep. But they wrote ya a note, and promised they'd write more when possible."

With trembling fingers Kitty opened the letter, and scanned it quickly. She chuckled. "It's better than I expected," she said. "They're happy I'm safe and glad that I'm happy, but... they wish I could have settled for someone a little less... _Blue_."

"But _mein_  Kätzchen, how could they think I was unhappy, when I'm married to you?" Kurt fought hard to keep the earnest look on his face, Jimmy could tell.

She pushed her husband on the arm. "That's not what they meant, fuzzy."

Becky gave them a decorated wooden sign that said, 'The Wagners', in letters both carved and burned into the wood. "My dad helped me with it," she said, looking over at the blonde man with a smile.

Steve smiled back. "Wood shop was one of my best classes."

Not being part of the family, most of the other guests gave their good wishes, but the children Suzanne looked after each contributed drawings for the occasion. The happy couple hugged and thanked them.

* * *

As the evening wore on to dinner and dancing, the children were long since sent to bed. Jimmy sat in a corner, and dank enough alcoholic spirits to keep the Spirits of his conscious at bay. Dion had come to him last night, weeping and devastated. Her owner had passed her to a colleague who wasn't at all gentle. It made him burn with frustrated anger to see the bruises and bites on her pale flesh, and know that there was nothing he could do. He'd comforted her as much as he could, without a word or a touch. The outrage and love in his eyes would have to be enough.

Eventually, when she faded into deeper, dreaming sleep, she'd left him. He'd gotten up in the dimness of his room, and paced the floor. If only he wasn't so stupid! He should have figured out her clues to her location years ago. She was in America, he'd learned that much, and was on the East Coast, but there was no way to pin point her location, as there had been for Raven. She was north of Maryland D.C.; he'd felt that when they rescued the Captain.

He slammed his fist on his lonely table, making the cluttered empty glasses rattle against each other. There were thousands of communities and millions of people crowding the New England coast, and the Raiders wouldn't commit to a mission without a specific target, and he couldn't provide that. He buried his face in his hands, and tried to pull himself together. He was so tired, and so despondent, and the alcohol wasn't helping... but he didn't care... for a moment, a brief moment, his aching soul was anesthetized. It blunted the edges of his pain... but also washed away his common sense.

Finally, someone intruded into Jimmy's dark corner. It was Kurt, of course. Kurt always tried to help him when he was like this. But Jimmy could no longer console himself with the bitter thought that at least his brother was alone, too...

"Come on, _bruder_ , off to bed with you," Kurt said, taking a forgotten half-filled glass from his hand. "That's enough to drink."

"Leave me alone, _arseloch_ ," Jimmy heard his slurred words, but as if someone else was saying them. "Why don't you go take your _muschi_ [***] to bed?"

Jimmy barely had a chance to register the look of shock and anger on Kurt's face, before a hard blue fist sent him abruptly into blessed unconsciousness.

 

[*] A/N: I suppose I've come to terms with the Draco storyline in the comics. For one thing, the old 'German Count' story is far too vague. That two word description is practically all the personality the character ever had in the original cannon, and that gives a writer little to work with. Having Azazel be Kurt's father, on the other hand, opens up many new possibilities for drama. Ol' Azzy isn't the mythological Devil, or even an infernal demon; the new canon states he's from a prehistoric breed of demonic looking mutants, who were thrust into another dimension by a band of angel-like mutants. So, this is my take on the story, with a 'Shield Administrator' taking the place of the Count. Check out "Azazel" in Wikipedia; Kurt's father is mentioned on the page. 

[**] A/N: /Snicker. Props out to an artist named Bluefooted who has a Deviant Art site. Her pics at one time had some hilarious domestic scenes of Kurt and Ororo and their kids, that deal with shedding fuzzy elves among other homey problems at bluefooted.deviantart.com/gallery. Beautiful stuff, including original works and Harry Potter fanart. Anyway, I'd planned this pool scene back when I wrote the original "Mr. Tails" scene in SATK, and I finally worked it in, adding in Duncan and Rose. 

[***] A/N: And finally, Kurt said when he and Kitty first met, that there was a somewhat rude word in German that meant both cat, and a women's sexual anatomy, just as there is in English. I've never used it before, because Kurt was would never dream of saying it. (Okay, he refused to, happy? _Darn uppity characters..._ ) Ordinarily, Jimmy wouldn't either, but he's been kinda stressed lately. Just wondering... what do you all think of Jimmy and his problems?


	3. Becky – Objects In Motion

Kurt refused to repeat what Jimmy had said to get himself punched, and Becky was helped get the drunken sot back to his rooms. Warren brought a wheeled chair, and she and Mack hoisted the limp form into it. They wheeled him to his room and tried not to bump him into too many walls on the way home. She poured Jimmy into his bed, and looked over his shelves as the boys loosened his belt or whatever to make him comfortable.

Up on an easel was a striking image of a woman’s purple eyes, drying from an application of fixatives. Intrigued, Becky pulled out a hand-stitched notebook from a shelf full of them nearby. A world of obsession opened up in it; delicate, feminine hands laced together, the curved of an elegant neck… she blushed and changed the page from a woman in an explicitly sexual pose. Gradually, Becky realized that all the works depicted the same woman.

“Later, Becky,” Warren said. She nodded absently. The next notebook was more of the same, and the next, and the next… And the older the notebook got, the younger the girl was. The oldest of them was a collection of odd-sized pages carefully stitched between two wooden plates. The artistry in this one was talented but amateurish, the work of someone just learning his craft. The girl on these pages was a waif, almost boyish in appearance, but still astonishingly beautiful.

She looked over at Jimmy, who hadn’t moved since the boys had covered him up. She paged through the books again, and noticed that they weren’t all studies or pinups. In one the girl knelt by fuzzy letters spelling out ‘d’, ‘i’, ‘o’, and ‘n’. From that, it appeared that Jimmy named her. Other pages were… puzzles. A few of the puzzles had small question marks in the corners, but in many of them, the question mark was struck out. These pages were scattered through the notebooks, like the picture of the girl next to an outline of America in an early one.

She put the notebooks away, in order, and then saw a bigger one on the other side of the easel with a red leather cover. Jimmy groaned as she reached for it, and tried to get up, his contorted face a sickly shade. Becky sighed and helped him get to the bathroom so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit. Mom said drinking was a bad idea, and now she understood exactly why. Once he was safely back in bed, and snoring once more, she took the red notebook, and left. She felt a little guilty about it, but her mother taught her that sometimes breaking the rules was the only way to get to the bottom of something important.

* * *

Young Pete was very useful in making copies of the red notebook’s pages, but when Becky tried to sneak the book back into his room in the morning, he was gone. It was clear that he’d noticed the loss. The room was a shambles; the contents of his drawers and his bedclothes strewn across the floor. Only the area his artwork was in remained relatively undisturbed. She sighed, knowing she was busted. Tucking the red book back in its place, she quickly tracked down her mother.

“Mom! I’m in trouble, so… we need to go see Magnusson before they find me, so I can explain.”

Raven looked up at her from her reading. “Is that what they taught you here?” she deadpanned.

Becky frowned. “Well, yeah. If you ‘fess up first, before you’re caught, the consequences aren’t so bad.” She gave Raven a smile. “It’s not so different from the way you raise kids.” Her mother smiled back briefly, and then looked deliberately over Becky’s shoulder. Slowly Becky turned around to see the Raider’s leader in the doorway frowning at her.

Raven rose to her feet. “Oh, Jon, how nice of you to stop by,” she said as he came in. “Becky was just looking for you.”

“I heard,” he said, still looking at Becky. “Why did you steal from my son?”

“I didn’t steal it, I borrowed it,” she said. “I put it back first thing this morning.” Jon still frowned. Becky sighed. “Did he even tell you what was missing?”

“Does it matter?” he said. “We don’t approve of theft on the Asteroid, Becky. You took his art, and that’s very important to him.”

“Of course it matters! Sir, I think there’s something wrong with Jimmy, and he needs help.” Jon’s expression altered slightly. “There’s something eating at him, and it’s all documented in those notebooks. He’s obsessed with these puzzles, and the red book I borrowed is where they’re collected.” She waved her hands, trying to find the words…

Raven put her hands on Becky’s shoulders. “She may have a point. Your lady knows that last night wasn’t the first time Jimmy’s reacted badly to Kurt and Kitty. Maybe we should find out why?”

Jon sighed and sat on the edge of Raven’s desk. “What did you find, Becky?”

“He draws this girl, and he named her ‘Dion’,” she said. “He draws her over and over and over, in every pose imaginable. I think that he thinks she’s real, and he’s desperately trying to find her. But he can’t figure out all the puzzles, and he’s cracking up about it.”

“Why were you looking at his art?” Jon said. “Jimaine and Kurt both said that he’s very private about it.”

“No one told me it was a big deal, and I didn’t want watch the Raider-twins loosen his clothes, alright? So I started looking through the notebooks, and I just couldn’t stop. Besides, I helped him to the bathroom when he had to throw up last night, but I bet he doesn’t remember that, does he?” She looked at her mom. “If that’s what drinking does to you, I’m swearing off in advance."

Raven gave her a crooked smile, and then turned to her visitor. “I think her heart was in the right place, Jon. Maybe this does bear looking into. A secret held that close to the chest would be a burden to anyone.”

Jon nodded reluctantly. “Then, I guess it’s time to hold an intervention.”

* * *

“You bitch! How dare you!” were the first words Jimmy had for her when he saw her in the meeting room.

“James Karl Szardos!” his mother snapped. “Sit down. Now.” He sat, and then blanched when he saw the whole array of his notebooks on the table. Hard on the heels of that reaction was a hot red flush of anger and betrayal.

Kurt picked up one of the notebooks and looked through it. Jimmy clenched his hands together as if to keep from snatching it away. “So, this Dion, she is your dream girl? The reason you are so jealous of Kätzchen and I?”

“She’s real.” Jimmy hissed through his teeth. “Magali said so. And she’s out there… somewhere.”

“Where?” Jon said.

His son put his haggard face in his hands. “I… don’t know. Dion can’t tell me. We can’t speak to each other, and she’s not as lucid as I am in the dream state.” He struggled through another surge of temper, and then sighed. “Here’s what I do know. She’s an American mutant, somewhere on the East Coast. When I was in Maryland helping to rescue the Captain, I felt her to the North of me. She was detected by Shield several years ago, and sterilized. She doesn’t have a useful power, so now she’s some Shield man’s private sexual pet.” He gave Raven a look. “You know what that’s like.”

Raven flinched, and then nodded, expressionless.

A flicker of sympathy crossed Jimmy’s face, before it was replaced by a grim hatred that wasn’t directed at anyone present. “We’ve been in touch pretty much nightly since I was young. The night before the ceremony, she’d been roughly passed around like a party favor.” Jimmy’s voice trembled as he continued. “She was crying. I could see the marks they left on her, and it just tore at my heart.” He smeared the tears from his face. “Before you found your Kitty, _bruder,_ we were… well, even, because we both thought our love lives were hopeless cases. It hurt me so much to see the two of you together, that it overwhelmed my happiness for you, sometimes. Knowing that Dion is still being abused, everyday… I’m sorry, Kurt. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Kurt clasped his arm. “I forgive you, but from now on, this is a family problem. All of your family wants to help you, and maybe, together we can solve your riddles. _Ja?_ ”

Jimmy looked around the table, from face to concerned face, and slowly nodded. “ _Ja._ ”

* * *

After lunch, Jimmy came to Becky in the dining room where she sat with Kitty, toying with some papers. “ _Fraulein?_ I’m sorry. I thought… I thought I could manage things… I didn’t want anyone else involved. Please, forgive me.” He gave a little bow, his face anxiously sincere.

“I wasn’t trying to butt into your business, Jimmy,” Becky said. “I just wanted to help, can you see you see that?”

He nodded. “I know. I shouldn’t have been so rude to you.”

She hugged him. “No problem, brother. Say, look what we have here!” She had a copy of one of Jimmy’s rebuses, along with some maps. “This is from Dion, right?” She held up a picture of a large halved apple, lined with different colored worm tracks that meandered in strikingly angular fashions, centered on a cartoony worm that had purple eyes. “Kitty and I think we’ve figured this one out.”

“ _Was?_ That is amazing… explain it please!” Jimmy sat down, his face eager. “She’s been frustrated that I haven’t understood this one.”

Becky looked at Kitty, who took the picture and put it back on the table. “I guess it takes an American to know the nick-names we give our cities,” Kitty said. “In this case, we call New York City, ‘The Big Apple’.” Becky grinned at the wide-eyed expression on his face as Kitty continued. “Becky came up with the idea that the tracks were landmarks…”

Becky jumped in impatiently. “See, on this New York subway map, the brown lines roughly matches this part of the map. And the gray lines are pretty close to some of the surface streets in the same region.”

“So,” Kitty said. “We think she’s not only trying to tell you what city she’s in, but where in the city she’s at, as indicated by the little worm.” Kitty looked at the maps, “The detail isn’t very good, but assuming she conveyed it right and you correctly portrayed that, I think it can be narrowed down to the Upper East Side, a wealthy neighborhood of Manhattan. That’s still a pretty big territory to search, but its whole lot better than ‘the north part of the U.S. East Coast’, right?”

He looked over the maps, finding the correlations they’d mentioned, and nodding. “She’d tried to tell me in other ways, but it’s hard for her to spell words in dream-state. The most I understood was, ‘the new city’ or ‘Apple City’. It never occurred to me she was giving a nick-name.” His eyes glittered with tears of emotion. “Thank you so much, both of you.”

“We’re family, Jimmy,” Kitty said. “That’s what family does.” She looked at him shrewdly. “But you can tell me what you said to Kurt…”

Jimmy flushed, and wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I suggest you ask your husband, Kitty.” She made a face. “Please? It would humiliate me to repeat it.”

Kitty looked off. “That’s what he said.” She got a determined look on her face. “But I think it’s time I insisted. See ya later, guys.”

Becky and Jimmy watched her leave. “It’s a good thing _mein bruder_ doesn’t show bruises very much,” Jimmy muttered. “She’s going to slap him.”

Becky was curious, but knew she’d probably never find out what the mysterious insult was. “Shouldn’t she slap you? You’re the one who said it.”

“She very probably will,” he said with a frown. He stood up hurriedly as Jimaine Szardos walked up to them.

“I’m pleased that you have remembered your manners, and made peace with your family, James.”

He ducked his head. “Yes, ma’am,” he said quietly.

She kissed his forehead. “Are you ready to see Ilyana with me?” Jimmy nodded.

Becky looked up from where she was gathering the papers they’d been using. “What about Ilyana?” She counted the autistic Russian girl a friend.

“Young Mr. Munroe asked us to look in on her,” Jimaine said. “Perhaps Sorcery can accomplish what Science can’t.”

Becky followed them, concerned with her friend. Even with Ilyana’s disability, Becky felt close to her. Along with the adults and most of the older teens, she helped to care for the girl. In the medical bay, she and Jon watched the mother and son use magic to scan both Ilyana and Mack. Becky didn’t object to the Gypsy rituals as much as Kitty did, but they still struck her as being pretty creepy.

The scans showed powerful swirls of darkness around Ilyana, and a hint of an odor of corruption that seemed to concern both practitioners of the Winding Way. The second scan showed mostly nascent sparks around Logan and Ororo’s son, and a sense of something coming into being. “There’s a feeling of magic around you, Mack,” Jimmy said. “Or at least a sensitivity to the supernatural. I think that’s part of the reason you’re drawn to her, because of all the magic that’s around her.” Mack cleared his throat and looked away, flushing.

Jimaine nodded in agreement. “But the magic around her is all Dark, tainted even. Someone hurt this girl badly some time ago. What do you know of her history?” Becky perked her ears up, she’d never been told what happened to Ilyana.

Jon rubbed his chin. “Piotr Rasputin was a Raider and one of Magneto’s guardians. During his service he arranged for his little sister to be smuggled out of Russia before she could be caught by the Russian Shield command. While the rescue operation of the Underground was still ongoing, Piotr… died. She was at one of our bases on this odd little island in the Atlantic when she went missing. We searched for her, and when she finally turned up she was in a profound state of shock, and she’s just never really recovered.[*] If anything she’s only gotten worse over the years.” He sighed. “And nothing we could do has been able to help her.”

“I don’t think it’s something your medical technology is capable of mending, love,” Jimaine said.

“Her spirit’s weak, Mama. Maybe we can bolster it.” Jimmy set up his magical apparatus and the two of them performed a ritual over the girl.

“This is only a stopgap, Jimmy,” Jimaine said. “I’ll have to research the matter with Mother.” She put a protective charm around Ilyana’s neck, and watched as Mack eased her into a better sitting position. The blonde girl sighed and leaned her head against Mack’s shoulder.

He, in turn stiffened, a hopeful look on his face. “Ilyana?” He turned her to face him, and then his face showed his disappointment as her eyes still couldn’t meet his own. “I don’t see any change,” he said. Becky knew it was rare for him to show his feelings so openly.

“We’ve bandaged a deep hurt that can’t be seen,” Jimmy said. “We really haven’t even begun to treat her yet, but we have a better idea of what is wrong.” Jimmy gave Mack a searching look and a rueful smile.

Mack returned the smile in kind. “Liking someone who’s there but not there? I can understand that. Just… make sure I’m there when you work with her again, okay?”

“I’ll make sure of it,” the young sorcerer said.

* * *

Becky walked to her mother’s rooms, but before she turned the last corner, she heard raised voices. “…won’t allow it!” It was Steve Rogers, and he sounded angry.

“How dare you? You’ve never been a part of her life, and now you presume to dictate what she can do with it? This isn’t the ‘40’s anymore, Rogers.” Her mother sounded like coiled steel: cold and dangerous.

“Fighting is risky. She’s too young to be putting her life on the line.” _Is that what he really thought?_

“Who said she was in danger? The only missions she’s been on were with trained people during our respective rescues. And before you start that ‘weaker sex’ line, you fought alongside Spitfire and Miss America in World War II.”

“Against my better judgment, most of the time,” he snapped.

“How chivalrous of you! Why didn’t you tell them to stay home and have babies, if that’s how you felt?”

“Neither one of them was my daughter, Raven. And I hesitate to bring this up, but there’s a reason they didn’t allow women in the Army.”

“Because War’s too clean to let the girls play too? But when it comes to fighting for one’s freedom and survival, we have just as much to lose as men, and sometimes a lot more.” Her mother paused, and Becky heard pages flipping. “We can contribute just as much. Let me put it in terms that you can understand, farm boy. When Deborah was Judging Israel, it took a woman to defeat Sisera. After offering hospitality to the enemy of her people, Jael came into the tent while he slept and nailed his head to the ground with a tent peg.”

There was a long pause, as Becky supposed that her father was just as surprised as she was that Mom could quote the bible, or even _had_ one. In the back of her mind she warred between the thought that Kurt would probably be pleased, and the notion that even the Devil could quote scripture.

“I still don’t want her to join the Raiders,” her father said in a more persuasive tone. “I’ve only just met her, and I don’t want to lose her. I’d do anything to keep her from being hurt.”

“But that isn’t up to you, and ultimately it isn’t up to me, either. She’s a mutant and this isn’t just a war on our kind, it’s genocide. I want to tell her she can’t fight, just as much as you do, but mostly I want her to have what I never had: a choice. A choice to pursue whatever dreams she might have. And if she chooses to fight and you try to argue the point, I will fight you.”

She heard him give a frustrated sigh. “Will you at least talk to her about her dress?” _Wait, what was wrong with the way she dressed?_

“What, are you upset that she doesn’t dress more like me?” Well, Mom did wear her clothes kinda tight.

“Raven, nice girls don’t dress like you do. The only ones I knew of that did were… for hire.”

“Well, at lot has changed since then, Rogers, and in case you hadn’t noticed, I am not a _nice_ girl.”

“Believe me, Miss Darkholme,” her father said coldly, “I have noticed.”[**]

She heard a door slam, and she ducked to peer around the corner as her father stomped away, thankfully in the other direction, tension radiating from his retreating form. With the sound of objects being thrown in her mother’s room, this wasn’t a good time to visit. Becky quietly left, thinking over what she’d heard.

* * *

Logan came in while Becky and her peers were at their workout. “Alright kids, you’ve had some time to cool down, so tell me… do you still want to work with Kurt and Kitty?”

She answered first, “Sure. They understand what we’re really up against.” Across the room, her father frowned, but her mom nodded thoughtfully.

Mack nodded, putting his weights down. “They know their stuff, Dad.”

Jimmy and Warren shared a look. Jimmy said, “We… well, separately, anyway, and for different reasons… have to apologize to them, but I… need to be in this fight. Between my advocacy for the Dead and… Dion… I have to.”

The gruff man frowned. “Spooks or no spooks, Jim, it’s your life, don’t forget that.”

“I know, and this is the life I choose,” Jimmy said with conviction.

“Red?” Logan said.

Warren hesitated, and then nodded. “I don’t know if they told you, but my folks apologized to me for shielding me so much from the realities we live in. I should have known better that not every place is as safe as here years ago, when Dad was hurt so bad and the others were killed. I didn’t mean to make light of their suffering.”

Kitty stepped out from the doorway behind Logan, and hugged the redhead. “I forgive you, Warren,” she said. “And I’m sorry to make you face our realities.” She walked up to Jimmy and shook her finger at his face, the last shake lightly contacting his nose. “That was not a nice thing to say, Jimmy, but I understand. I understand that you were a drunken, love-sick idiot.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He took her still extended hand and bowed over it, giving it a courtly kiss.

“See, _liebe?_ I told you he could do the contrite thing well.” Becky saw her brother lounging against the doorway.

“So, you guys good?” Logan asked. “It’s important because we’re gearing up for a major mission, and your teachers think it would benefit you to watch us train, but only if you approach it with the right attitudes.”

Steve walked over to him. “Whatever the mission is, I want in.”

Logan cocked his head at the taller man. “Yer face is a liability in a mission against Shield. You look like a young Dear Leader, which is to say you look like yourself. If you grew some whiskers and changed yer fighting togs, then maybe. What about you, Raven?”

“I want to,” she said. She looked at Becky and sighed. “But the fact is, seeing a Shield uniform still makes me want to throw up… It’s hard enough just looking Rogers in the face without seeing my rapist…” Raven shook her head, staring off, and oblivious to the look of surprise and sickened understanding that Becky saw cross her father’s face, followed by what might be concern. Her mother continued, finally, “I’m afraid I’ll just be another liability.”

Becky wiped the threat of tears from her eyes. She didn’t know that Mom’s imprisonment had affected her so much.

“Yer doin’ well in counseling, they tell me,” Logan said gruffly. “Train with us anyway, it’ll do you good, even if you can’t get back on the horse yet.”

Raven gave a humorless chuckle, “Even if what I fear the most is the ‘horse’ getting back on me?”

“Raven?” Kitty came up to her, and reached out to the older woman, understanding in her eyes.

Raven let herself be embraced, and kissed her daughter-in-law on the forehead. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Anytime,” Kitty said with a smile. “But I don’t think that’s what he meant.”

“Ya got that right! I meant gettin' back in the fight, not… whatever yer talking about.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about, Wolverine, and for me the two problems are one and the same.” Steve put a hand lightly on her shoulder and she turned on him like a viper. “Hands off, boy scout!” she snapped.

He stepped back immediately, holding up his hands. “Sorry.” But Becky was sure now, she could see a new sympathy from him when he looked at Raven.

“So what’s the target,” she said, desperate to change the subject.

Logan smiled grimly. “The Heli-Carrier.”

Kitty and Kurt looked at each other in satisfaction, and Becky saw a long missing passion for the fight start to blaze in Raven Darkholme’s eyes.

* * *

In the meeting room, Cyclops was all business. “You four sit there and keep quiet. If you must say something, wait to be acknowledged.” Jimmy raised his hand. “Yes, James?” the Raider’s Mission Leader said.

“I want to go, if our instructors judge me ready,” Jimmy said. “The shades of a thousand Hounds are urging me to help end the torment.” He looked off, as if listening to something... or someone. “Brother, Kitty? This may not be the best time, but Karla wishes to congratulate you on both your marriage and your freedom.”

Kitty gasped, and buried her face in her husband’s shoulder, clutching his shirt. Kurt just leaned his head against hers, and gave Jimmy a little nod. Jimmy sat back, indicating he was done. Cyclops acknowledged Becky next.

“The same from me, if I’m ready. My powers are fully developed, and I’m trained in them,” she said.

“No!” Steve said. He stood up, frowning at his daughter and ignoring Raven’s glare.

Cyclops turned to him. “It’s not your team, Rogers, and not your decision, either.”

“Dad,” Becky said. “It could have been me up there, sterilized and tortured for their amusement, instead of a girl I grew up with like a sister. If I can help stop that, then I’m more than willing.”

Steve turned to Raven, as if for support in his position. “She’s become her own person,” Raven said with a shrug.

Cyclops looked at Mack and Warren. “Well? You two have anything to say?”

Mack said, “Good luck?”

“Our powers aren’t active yet, so we know we aren’t going,” Warren said. His father nodded approvingly, and the meeting got underway.

“ _Herr_ Summers?” Kurt said, as Kitty got back in her own seat, her equilibrium recovered. “We think that both Jimmy and Becky are fit for a group mission. They performed well with us previously.”

Cyclops nodded. “We were pretty sure you would give your authorization, but we weren’t going to assume it.” He smiled a little, and nodded to Jon.

Jon laid out maps on the table. “Kurt and Kitty have annotated these charts of the Carrier with every detail they can remember. I’ve noted some important targets; like the Hound barracks, the Contra-Grav generator, and the main power plants.”

“ _Herr?”_ Kurt said. “Are we allowing time for personnel to evacuate?”

“You want to give Shield that much time to try and stop us?” Jon countered.

Kurt’s mouth tightened. “It’s just that there are regular people up there, too. The trash supervisor, Joe, is an innocent. He’s human, but he’s a good and kind man who did much to make our stay less miserable in many small ways. If we take the Hounds off, we must take him too, because I don’t trust Shield not to abandon the lesser employees to their deaths.”

“Seriously?” Jon said, raising his eyebrows.

“Absolutely,” Kitty said. “I know I couldn’t live with myself if he were to get hurt, despite how much I want to see the Carrier downed.” She stood and flipped through the plans and accompanying photos. “Are these current?” Jon nodded. Kitty compared the pictures against the charts and finally pointed out a spot on the charts and handed Kurt one of the photos. “Love, that’s our vent! They must have taken the baffles off when they dropped down fully into the atmosphere.” She looked around at the Raiders. “If you’re looking for a weakness, or an easy path through the hulls near the engines, that’s it. Even if they reinforced the back wall to our quarters, we know that space so well, we can get through.”

Kurt smiled. “ _Ja, liebe,_ and besides, we want to retrieve our treasures. The book of prayers, and the journal we shared.”

“Were the pillows and cords left out?” she said.

“ _Nein_ , I took them down with me when the baffles were placed.”

“What was this back wall made out of?” Cyclops said.

“That’s just the thing,” Kurt said. “Nothing more than two-by-fours and sheetrock.”

Jon looked at Cyclops. “We have to expect some reinforcement of the structure they’re talking about, but do you think it’s a valid approach?”

Scott nodded. “The main team that I’ll be leading will be the diversionary force, but this will be perfect for the explosives group. Running on batteries, the Carrier is as aerodynamic as a brick. The Stealth team gets in there, places the explosives throughout the engines, and your team takes out the flight drive.”

“We make sure the Hounds… and this Joe guy gets out of there, and the rest falls down,” Jon said. “I want Jimmy with me, as a reinforcement to my abilities.” He paused, looking at Scott, “With Steve and Becky as our backup?”

Becky felt both scared and excited. Her dad wasn’t complaining anymore, but he still looked unhappy about the whole idea.

Summers rubbed at the deep scars under his darkened glass lens. “That would save the members of the main Raiders team for the forward assault which would be helpful. You and Legacy stand a good chance of matching up to the four of us, plus Wanda, so a couple of good scrappers watching over you would work out nicely.”

“And we are the stealth team,” Kurt said, inclining his head to Kitty. “Our shuttle should let us off at the vent, and then fly under stealth to a point off the Garbage bay so we can bundle Joe aboard. We plant the explosives and join the main team as you head for the Hounds.”

Kitty nodded. “Anyone else with us?”

“Me,” Raven said. “If I can’t handle it, I get off with the trash man.”

Scott looked at her, noticing the trembling hands she was pressing hard onto the table. “Okay, good thinking, Raven. Jon, I think your team will start out with the main team, and we’ll split up when we get to the middle levels, hopefully about when the stealth team meets up with us.”

“That rendezvous point you’re talking about,” Jon said, pointing at the charts. “Around here?” Cyclops nodded. “Commit these charts to memory, Jimmy. If for some reason I have a problem,” Jon tapped his head with a slight grimace, “you’ll need to complete my mission.”

“Yes, Papa,” he said. “What about you, Mama?”

Jimaine shrugged. “I’m willing, but I don’t know where I’d fit in.”

“If you don’t mind a suggestion, Scott?” Jon said. “I have an idea for that.”

“You’re the boss. I’m only the field commander,” Scott said.

“Very funny, old man,” Jon said. “Okay, Becky, you join up with the stealth team, Wanda moves to mine, and Jimaine goes with the main. I know that having Jimaine in my team would be a distraction to me. And if you were honest with yourself, Steve, you’d be a little too worried about your daughter to function.”

“You’re darned right I would,” Steve said. His shoulders slumped. “I’m just… having a hard time coming to terms with this whole idea.” Becky saw her mother frown, but keep her peace.

“Get used to it,” Logan said. “I did, and so did Cyke about Jean.” He smiled at Ororo. “I couldn’t keep ‘Ro from fighting if she wanted to, and I know she’s good at it. And, Jon, if your ladylove is gonna distract you, you two need to train enough so that isn’t an issue anymore.”

“You’re right, Logan,” Jon said. “Ultimately that sort of concern is a lack of confidence in the one you’re worried about.” He gave Steve a significant look. “But with enough training, the four Raiders worked through that, just like Kurt and Kitty did.” Steve acknowledged the comment, but still frowned.

“I have a question,” Kurt said. “Where is the Carrier going to crash?”

“Good question,” Jon said. “It’s over Louisiana right now, and we know they sometimes have trouble with their primitive flight computers. I’m planning on putting in a virus that will direct them over the Gulf in the prelude to our attack. We’ll be using our whole fleet of shuttles, to carry the assault teams and to provide cover against their support aircraft. The one with the main teams will land on the flight deck, blocking it from use, and another will be at the stealth team’s disposal.”

Scott looked over the papers, and those who surrounded the table, and nodded. “That’s the plan, then. All that’s left is the training.”

* * *

 “I won’t hit a little girl,” Steve growled. Logan had matched him up against Kitty.

“Then prepare to get chalked, Cap,” she said cheerily, holding up her boffer knives.

“I’m making a point, here, Rogers,” Logan said. “Ya can’t always judge your opponent on their size or appearance. This opponent is definitely tougher than she seems.” Becky had watched Kitty go against Logan and come out about even, so this was going to be a good fight… or a wakeup call for her dad. Or both.

Steve scowled, and held up his shield. He gasped as she dove forward and through him, sending him momentarily off balance. He got a chalk streak on his back when Kitty solidified behind him, but not enough to indicate a ‘kill’ before he reacted and swung the shield at her head. Kitty somersaulted out of the way and popped back on her feet, throwing dull knife blanks at him. He deflected most of them, but a few left marks on him.

Kitty held up her hand. “Femoral artery, Cap. If these were my real knives, you’d be gouting blood and losing the use of that leg.”

He looked down at the chalk on his thigh, and nodded. He dragged the leg when they continued, and was sent staggering backwards from a tumbling run that resulted in Kitty’s boots on his chest when his shield was out of position, with all her weight and momentum behind her. She leaped after his supine form, jumping on top of his shield and crouched, chalking him across the throat. “You’re holding back, Cap. Can’t you do better than that?”

“You’re as good as he said,” Steve told her, as he got back up and wiped the chalk away. Kitty rubbed out the smudge of chalk on his back.

“Shield taught me to use everything I had to kill for them,” she answered.

“Becky!” Logan called. “Over here.” She came over to see Jimmy in a black outfit with a celtic cross on the chest. She shivered, knowing what he meant by the symbol; a gravestone, as part of his ‘advocacy for the Dead’. He was standing next to Kurt who wore a pair of heavy leather gloves with metal studded knuckles. “Family time, kids. Kurt is going to give both of you some fighting practice. He promised not to rough you up too much.”

“You wouldn’t hit a girl, would you?” she teased her brother. Jimmy snorted.

“Of course I would, if she was as tough as you, _Schwester_ ,” Kurt said. “I no longer have the option of being a gentleman on the battlefield. Get ready…”

She couldn’t dissect this fight as well as she had between her dad and Kitty.  There was too much commotion, clouds of sulphur and _bamfs!_ , as her brother seemed everywhere she looked for a moment. He tangled her and Jimmy together, and finally knocked her silly with a punch to the head. Kurt continued with Jimmy who was reacting faster and faster with his power swapping as Becky rubbed her head.

“Try this,” Jon said through the ringing in her ears. She looked up to see him holding a round shield. It was the same size as her dad’s, but its color was solid glossy black. “It’s made of adamantium, so it’s not indestructible like his, but it’s pretty close. It’s an exact duplicate of the size, weight and aerodynamics of the original.”

“Thanks,” she said. She slipped it on her arm, and it felt just right, the same as the other that she’d carried before she’d returned it back to its true owner. She looked over at Logan. “Am I ‘out’?”

“Stunned, I’d say,” Logan answered. “Go surprise the elf.”

Grinning, she charged back into the fray, where the two brothers were struggling to best each other despite their flagging energies. She slunk along the edge of the conflict, and threw the shield, hitting Kurt in the back and knocking him down face first. Jimmy turned into a big metal man and pounced on him, pinning him down. The young sorceror grinned, and reverted to flesh, putting up a pulsing, shimmering field around them both. Kurt tried to port from under him, but failed with a _wuff_ of frustrated effort.

“Give!” Kurt yelled. “What _was_ that?” he asked as Jimmy helped him up.

“A fluxing magnetic field,” Jimmy said. “Magnus thought that part of your powers were electro-magnetically influenced, and I guess he was right. Pinned on your face, with your extra spatial senses clouded, you weren’t going anywhere.”

Becky picked up the dark shield. She didn’t quite have the knack of getting it to return to her when she threw it, yet. She rubbed a hand over the silky finish on the surface, and turned to see her father looking down at her, his own shield on his arm. Looking into her eyes, he saluted her. “Good work,” he said.

She burst into tears and wrapped him in a bear hug. He returned the hug awkwardly, patting her on the back. “What did I do?” he asked Kitty softly.

“You made her very happy,” she heard Kitty reply. Becky nodded against his solid chest. He’d accepted her; really accepted her, as a daughter and a fellow warrior, and it felt… wonderful!

* * *

Across the room, Raven scowled. If that blonde Boy Scout thought he was taking her daughter away from her, he had another thing coming…

 

[*] It occurred to me as I repost, that I never explained about Ilyana Rasputin. In the 616, when she was brought to live with the X-Men she was an eight year old girl. For a while they stayed at the weird Atlantic Island with the Cthulhu-esque architecture that just happened to contain the portals to Belasco's Realm; **Limbo**. (X-Men 160, 1982.) The mini-series "Magic: Storm and Ilyana (Originally published 1983-1984), depicts what happened in Limbo. In this Au, she didn't nearly double her age to 13 when she came out, like in 616, but what _did_ happen to her caused an ongoing degenerative  & dissociative condition.

[**]Kudos to anyone who foresaw that Cap and Raven would clash on any number of issues, most notably about Becky. I dunno, it's weird, but I think they’re kinda cute together, and do a lot to complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses.


	4. Kitty – Full Circle

Kitty watched the Carrier approach through the screens of the shuttle. It seemed like forever since the last time she arrived at the floating gulag. This time though, she came at night, and as a destroyer, instead as one whose life had just been destroyed. Neither she nor Kurt had gotten their qualifications to fly the shuttles yet, so she sat beside the pilot as he skillfully brought them to a dead halt relative to the shadowy Carrier’s bulk. The four members of Kurt’s team inched across the blunt wing of their craft far above the invisible ground below. She shone a hooded light inside the slats of the vent, and then passed it to Kurt. “It looks pretty much as we left it.” Kurt nodded.

“Ready Raven?” she said. “You’re sure you’re not afraid of heights?”

Her mother-in-law frowned at her. “I’m ready.” Raven ran a hand over her black leather suit, and settled briefly on the butt of her pistol. It seemed to Kitty that Raven was far readier to deal with trivial obstacles like hundred foot drops than with the flesh and blood Shield opponents within the Carrier.

Kitty took Raven’s arm and phase-walked them both over to one side of ‘their’ girder, while Kurt and Becky _bamfed_ in at the other end. Becky wore an outfit very similar to the one her father was wearing for the mission; a tight indigo suit with a double-breasted jacket trimmed in narrow dark red stripes, with dusky red gloves and boots. About the only difference was the cut, and that Steve was wearing a mask. Becky’s jacket also had an iconic yellow ‘Scales of Justice’ over the heart, instead of the Captain’s simple white star.

The two former Hounds carefully examined the area with their flashlights, as Raven held onto one of the girder columns, and Becky balanced easily on her narrow support above the yawning darkness. “If they had bothered to inspect up here, they would have left marks of some kind,” Kurt said. “I don’t see anything like that up here.” She nodded in concurrence. “Now for the moment of truth…” Kurt reached into the nest of girder intersections near the ceiling and pulled out a small white book, the gilt inscription gleaming briefly in the strong lighting. His fangs lit up his dark face in a pleased grin.

The rest of their meager treasures were quickly retrieved; the shards of a plastic cup, a mint tin, smudged with the remains of Karla’s ashes, and the journal and pen set that Joe had given them. He stowed it all in a low pack that Becky wore, and then gave Kitty a thumbs up. She air-walked down to the deck, 30-some yards below. Above her she heard first one _bamf_ , then another as he ported Becky and then Raven to the bottom.

The missing section of framing studs and sheetrock had been replaced from the apartment’s back wall, but not reinforced, apparently. Kurt pointed at her, and then the wall. Kitty phased through at an oblique angle, to a point high on the wall of the bare, dusty room. Everything that had made this place their home in internment was gone. She wiped a bit of moisture from her eye and looked critically at the wall separating her from the team. It was just bare sheetrock on this side. She knocked briskly on it, to let Kurt know there were no unexpected barriers.

At her signal, she heard the whine of the mini electric saw he carried as he cut through lumber, drywall, and the metal fasteners with equal alacrity. When the job was half done, she used a dirk to pull the upper wall section loose so she could see the others again. Kurt straightened up from his work to look inside, and frowned before he bent to finish. “Move back, Kätzchen,” he said, and she retreated while Becky mule-kicked the lower segment into the room.

He stowed his cutter, and entered, prowling around the room, as Becky and Raven squeezed inside. “They erased us,” he said, as he rejoined them. She nodded, that was the impression that she’d had. “Very well. Our next step is to go to Joe’s quarters behind his office. The garbage bay is connected to the power generators, so we plant the charges after we get him in the shuttle. Then we head up to join the rest.”

Kitty phased partway through the door of the apartment, and looked up and down the hallway. She gestured thumbs up with the part of her they could still see, and she went all the way through. She tried the door, but it was locked, so she went back in. “Locked,” she said. Her husband nodded, and put an arm around her waist. She gave him a faint smile when she felt him give her a comforting squeeze. Of course, he’d noticed her quiet tension. Back out in the hall, he made short work of the lock.

Raven shook her head when she and Becky joined them. “You two really are dangerous, and you make quite a team.”

Kurt bowed his head to her, and gestured them to move to the rear of the Carrier. “Be warned, family, the room contains garbage, and it smells. There wasn’t a night shift, so we don’t expect to encounter anyone until Joe. When he’s taken off, the other teams are set to start their attack.” He opened the door and Becky pinched her nose shut, while Raven made a face.

The darkened garbage bay was deserted, as expected. “Wait here in the office,” Kitty said. “Best that it’s only those he knows at first.” She phased them through the door to the quarters behind the office, and whispered, “It might not be him anymore.”

“I know, but we have to check,” Kurt whispered in her ear, “I want no innocent blood on my conscious.” They ghosted through the door to the Spartan bedchamber. It was Joe all right, and boy, did the man snore. They moved to either side of his sleeping form. She mimed a hand over her mouth and looked meaningfully at him. He nodded and clamped his hand firmly over the mouth of his former boss.

Joe started awake, flailing his limbs, and fighting Kurt’s grip. “Easy, _Herr_ Joe. Be still and we will not hurt you.” The man’s eyes widened at the familiar accented voice and he looked back and forth at the two former Hounds, nervous sweat dripping down his face. “Will you stay quiet?” Kurt said. Joe nodded jerkily.

When Kurt took his hand away, Joe hissed, “What are you two doing back here? You’re asking for trouble?”

Kitty tapped the ‘M’ on her belt buckle. “We’re Raiders now. By morning this heap is going to be a flaming smear in the Gulf, but we insisted on getting you out of here, first. You don’t have to stay on the Asteroid, but if you want to live, you’ll come with us.”

“You have five minutes to get dressed and collect anything that you want,” Kurt said. Joe flicked his gaze at Kitty.

“I’ll wait in the office,” she said. She joined Becky and Raven. “He took that better than I thought,” she told them.

Several minutes later, Joe shuffled into the office with Kurt. His clothes were rumpled, and there were bits of clothing sticking out of his suitcase. In his other hand he held a milk crate containing a familiar record player and set of disks. Kitty gave him a warm smile for his thoughtfulness. He goggled a bit at the two blue women. “My mother,” Kurt said, “and my sister.”

Joe nodded at them, “Uh, Ladies.”

“Come along, Joe, the shuttle is just off the bay,” Kurt said. He lead them past the trash piles to where a net of steel cabling closed off what they remembered as an open bay door.” They hadn’t seen the net before in the dimness, against the night sky.

“We gotta retract the net,” Joe said. “But that will set off an alarm on the bridge.”

Kurt flashed him a smile. “It’s okay, they will soon have other things to worry about.”

Joe flipped the heavy switch to withdraw the net, “Like what, if you don’t mind my askin’?”

“Like the rest of the Raiders,” Kitty said. She flipped a dagger in her hand and smiled. He looked at it intently, having never seen either of them in their fighting gear, before.

The motorized winches whined as the lower end of the net spooled up into a compartment above the bay opening. The Raiders shuttle rippled into view just off the railing. Kurt swung up on the stubby wing and extended a hand down to grab Joe’s suitcase. He tossed it into the open door, and then reached back to pull Joe and his burden up next to him.  The pilot gave the human a hard look. “Is he armed?” Kurt shook his head, as he made sure Joe was strapped in, and then secured the luggage and milk crate.

“ _Nein_ , I watched him dress and pack. Becky, your small pack?” She tossed it to him and he snagged it from the air. He tucked it into the crate, and then covered the loose items against free-fall. “Just make sure that he and these things get back to the Asteroid unharmed, _verstehen Sie mich?”_

“Sure, sure. Um, I was told that Darkholme might be leaving with us?”

Kurt _bamfed_ back into the bay just as the Carrier rocked from a distant explosion. “Mother? There’s no shame in knowing your limits.”

Raven shook her head, and patted the pistol at her side. “The fun’s just beginning, and I don’t want to miss it,” she said. Kurt smiled and waved the pilot off. The shuttle swung away, fading from sight as it went to join the small fleet guarding against the approaching Shield fighter aircraft.

Kitty hit the switch to close the net over the bay again, and they moved off to place the explosive charges they were each carrying to the huge generators throughout the power plant. About halfway through this task, the red emergency lighting came on. “Now we move up towards the teams,” Kurt said as he led them out of the bay. “Take your disguises, please.” Raven morphed into a male officer, while Becky changed into another, woman officer. A quirk of her power allowed her to conceal the shield strapped to her back, similar to the one that allowed both shapeshifters to apparently alter their clothing.

He nodded Kitty and she ghosted up to the top of the corridor, half in and half out of the wall, while he crawled on the ceiling on the hallway’s other side. When they came opposite Kurt and Kitty’s old quarters, the lift at the forward end of the hall opened, and a cadre of four guards with their sergeant came out at a trot. “Captain… Zell,” the sergeant said, scanning the nametag of the officer Raven was portraying. “Did you check that alarm from Disposal?”

Raven nodded brusquely. “Yes. Woke up the supervisor who determined it was an electrical fault, so nothing to worry about. Perhaps you gentlemen should be more concerned about that explosion that happened up-ship a bit ago?”

The sergeant shook his head, “We’ve been told to look into this. From what you’ve said it won’t take long, then we’ll follow you up.”

“Carry on, Sergeant,” Raven said, and nodded for Becky, disguised as ‘Lt. Rogers’ to accompany ‘him’ to the lift. Kurt and Kitty carefully followed them, with Kitty slipping in just before the Kurt _bamfed_ in. He put an arm around her and clung to the roof holding her. He knew as well as she did that she couldn’t lurk phased in the wall of a moving elevator, and they need to hide in case anyone else entered the lift.

Two levels from their rendezvous with the other teams, the lift stopped, and a Trainer got on. The man sniffed, frowning. Kitty winced; Kurt’s distinctive sulpherous signature might cause a problem. Raven brazenly looked over at ‘Lt. Rogers’ with a fatuous smile. “That certainly was some good chili, wasn’t it, Lieutenant?” Becky gave her a weird look and a weak nod in response. Fortunately that was the perfect cover story. The Trainer glared at Raven and tapped his finger on his leg waiting for his floor.

As the lift slowed, gunfire could be heard above them. Kitty felt Kurt swing her to the side, and she phased as he let her go. He dropped onto the Trainer and clubbed him unconscious with his gauntleted fist. He straightened up and glared at his mother, who smirked at him while Becky tried to stop giggling. “Very funny,” he said, and hit the stop button. “Scout ahead, Kätzchen.”

She peeked through the side of the door and saw no nearby Raiders, and only a few Shield troops with their backs to the lift. Pulling back she said, “We have a clean line of fire to some Shield people. How’s your marksmanship?”

“Try me,” Raven said, morphing back to her true form and drawing her weapon.

Becky knelt, holding the black admantium shield in front of them, as Raven got down on one knee and steadied her pistol on the dark disk. She nodded, and Kurt and Kitty moved to cover on either side of the door. Kitty pressed the door open button before phasing through the control panel to incapacitate the lift.

 _Crack. Crack. Crack_. Three sharp reports from the pistol resulted in three slumped bodies. As the remaining enemies turned to face the new threat, Kurt and Kitty burst out of the lift. Kitty slashed one guard across the throat and phased to avoid the gout of crimson. Kurt grabbed hold of another and multiple ported with him until the man fell over, nose running red. Kitty felt hands around her neck, and over her shoulder she saw it was one of the men that Raven shot. Kurt was too far away to help immediately, so she grabbed the man’s wrists and phased them both. Twisting like her namesake, she spun his now lighter weight around until he was hip deep in the wall, and then she let go. His agonized scream made her grimace, so she angled her dirk precisely through his ribs, puncturing his heart, and silencing him.

With a sigh, she bent and wiped the blood on her blades on a Shield uniform. It was happening to her again… the enemies didn’t seem like people to her, just targets that happened to bleed. She shook her head at Kurt’s concerned look, and held her hand up. He nodded, knowing that they would discuss it another time. Raven gave her an impressed look when the others joined them, but Becky just looked green. “I told you,” Kitty said to her sister-in-law, “They made me a very good killer.”

Kurt trigged his comm., “We are on your floor, and we have eliminated some of the resistance.”

Cyclops leaned around a corner, and waved at them. Kurt’s team joined up with the others. “You’re with us,” Cyclops said to Kurt. “Good luck, sir” he said to Jon. The head shadowed within the brightly colored helmet nodded, and the new Magneto turned away, the long cape swirling around his boots, and his team, consisting of Jimmy, Wanda, and the Captain, following after. Becky threw a wave at her father, who returned it as they moved on.

Kitty joined Wolverine at the forefront of the main Raider contingent. Cyclops, Storm, and Psion provided long distance support to the fighters up front. Kurt, Raven, and Becky stayed in the rear, watching over Jimaine. Kitty couldn’t see how the team behind them was doing, she was too busy phasing through bullets and using her blades. For the first time, she was in combat long enough to see what she was meant to do with her lesser blades; throw them to their best effect, and then recover them as she went along. It was an ongoing process, as she’d fire them ahead, and pull them free and re-sheath them as she and Wolverine fought their way alongside her initial targets.

Fighting alongside Logan was an experience. It was impossible to avoid all of the gore spattered in his vicinity, even by phasing. He was growling and feral, and yet she could see the cool intellect that directed the ferocity, if only in his choice of targets and tactics.

Kitty heard a _bamf_ behind her, and she heard Kurt’s voice. “To your right, _liebe_.” She shifted away from Wolverine and Kurt stepped up between them, with a sword in his hand that he used to deadly effect.

“Where’d you get that?” she asked him during a brief lull. Kurt could really use that thing, she saw.

“Mama summoned it for me. Did you know I used to fence?” He thrust through a guard that stirred as she retrieved her knives from a corpse.

“Huh,” was all she had breath for. The sword spun and slashed, shining steel now marred by a slick of blood.

“Kitty in the middle,” Logan grunted at them, before charging forward once again.

“ _Jawohl!_ Good idea. Move, _liebe_ ,” Kurt jumped forward, blade first, and Kitty took the center position, her aim now unspoiled by any nearby opponents.

“We’re here,” Cyclops said. “This is the male dorm. You two go in and prepare them. I’ve got an exit to make.” Storm came forward, and put a hand on her mate, soft mists rinsing the blood from him. Kitty could see his nostrils flare as Wolverine registered Storm’s presence and begin to calm.

“Shadowcat,” Kurt said. Kitty turned to him. “There’s probably a guard in there. Take him out and open the door.”

Kitty nodded and ghosted through, shoulders deep in the floor. She spotted her target and rose up behind him. The man dropped silently from a precise hilt blow and the male Hounds stared at her from their bunks. “Get dressed quickly. We’re leaving before the Carrier crashes.” She opened the door.

“Kitten?” came Stalker’s familiar voice. “They said you and the altar-boy were dead.”

“How unfortunate for them, Brad,” Kurt said as he came in. “They were wrong.” The Carrier rocked once more, as a nearby set of outer hulls was breached. “Into the hallway, gentlemen, unless you want to be Hounds your whole lives.” Kurt kept his eyes on Brad as the other man walked by.

The Hounds stared at the Raiders as they spilled out of the dorm, They were waved by Cyclops into a shuttle hovering just past the force corridor that bridged the gap between the hulls. First one shuttle filled up, and moved off, then a second. The third wasn’t entirely full when it was waved off. Storm and Psion were working on the opposite wall, as the female Dorms were only one corridor away from the males.

Kitty went in and took out the guard in the next dorm. There were maybe two-thirds as many women Hounds as there were men. She checked the other hall, and then malleable opened their door. “Come on Ladies, dress and get going.” Kitty watched as a door outline in red showed on the wall, spraying yellow sparks on the deck. Psion was bending sections away as soon as enough metal was malleable enough to allow it. A hiss of hot steam gusted as Storm cooled the bent edges. Kitty waved them through, looking closely at them as they went past her. She didn’t see anyone who matched Raven’s description of Marie. Certainly there was no one her age.

Raven and Becky verified her guess. “She’s not here,” Raven said as the last of the tattooed women boarded a shuttle and took off.

“Psion?” Cyclops said. “Contact the other team, and you three with psi-powers scan the Carrier for her. If there’s still a Hound aboard, it should be easy to find her.”

Jean closed her eyes, and a few minutes later, she reported. “Legacy says she’s in the brig. She’s worse off than Kurt and Kitty were. Magneto says he has what he came for, and their team will find their own way out. Be aware, he says, that the Carrier has at most sixty minutes of flight time left. He wants us to withdraw and allow evacuation in the next fifteen to twenty minutes.”

With a look, Kitty communicated to Kurt a plan, and they each took hold of Raven and Becky’s shoulders, respectively. Cyclops nodded, “Go,” he said, and called for a pickup.

“Let me help,” Jimaine said. “Kurt, make your ports to where you target is, and I’ll bring the rest of us.”

“ _Ja_ , mama.” Kurt saluted her with his sword and _bamfed_ away.

Kitty wondered why she didn’t even feel disturbed as Jimaine’s magic took hold of them and sent them after her adoptive son. She saw movement down the hall when the four of them appeared, that proved to be Kurt, rapidly checking the claustrophobic little cells for occupants. “Raven, Mother, here she is!”

Kitty moved to follow them when a name on a nearby office door caught her attention. ‘Captain Rudolf’ it said, and she smiled grimly, and then hurried to catch up to them. The auburn haired girl lying on the cell’s bunk was motionless and dull-eyed. Dark hollows around her eyes and on her cheeks bespoke of grim horrors, as did the white streak in her hair. Kurt picked the lock and was fairly shoved aside as Raven reached for the girl.

The prisoner flinched away, scrambling backwards to the far end of the bunk. There was a collar on her neck, and gloves on her hands. “Marie?” Raven said. “It’s me, Mom. We’re here to get you out.”

Listless green eyes seemed to slowly focus. Marie’s mouth worked before she managed to say, “Mama?” Her southern accent was hoarse with disuse or strain. “Is that… really you?” She shook with the effort of sitting up, her eyes darting from face to face. “Becky? You’re here, too?”

Raven tried to enfold Marie in an embrace, but the girl squirmed away. Raven was suddenly and forcibly rebuffed, by a boot shoved hard against her chest. “ _Get off of me, you bitch-freak!_ ” Kitty gasped, because the accent was now a nasal Boston twang, and the girl’s eyes were a cold blue-gray. “I don’t want anything to do with you!”

Becky tried to bite back a sob, and Raven’s shoulders slumped in despair. Jimaine stepped forward. “Who are you? Because there’s more than one person behind those eyes.”

“Carol Danvers, Agent of Shield. What’s it to you, freak?”

“I’m not a mutant, Agent Danvers, I’m a sorceress, and we haven’t the time to play with you. Sleep!” Jimaine gestured, and Marie… or 'Danvers', slumped over. “Pick her up, Becky. We have her, and we’ll have to straighten out her problems later.”

Becky gathered up the girl and nudged Raven. “It’s okay, Mom. We can help her.” Raven wiped the tears from her face, and then nodded.

“Gather ‘round,” Jimaine said. “It’s time to leave.”

“Go on ahead,” Kitty said. “There’s something else Kurt and I need to take care of back here. Come right back for us, okay?”

“ _Katzchen_?” Kurt said, confused. “ _Was?_ ”

“Come on,” she said, yanking on his arm, and taking off down the hallway. She took him to the office door she’d noticed earlier, and pointed out the sign to him. His mouth hardened as he read it, and then a wicked grin curled his lips.

“Captain, now, is he? Unfinished business…” he murmured, and took a small cup-like device from his pouch and placed it against the door, and listened. “He’s in there.”

Kitty nodded and put her face in the door, while reaching her hand back for him. When he took it, she pulled him through, into the small room. Oh, how the mighty have fallen, she thought. It was such a squalid little office.

Captain Rudolf was on the phone, turned away from the door she and Kurt stood at. “…dammit, Operator, I may have been demoted to this hell hole of a brig, but I hear explosions, and I demand to know what’s going on! Hello? Hello!” At the same time he noticed his phone line was cut, Kurt locked the door with an audible click.

Slowly he turned around, his face twisting in a sneer when he saw them. But tellingly, he blanched as he realized the depth of trouble he was in. Kitty knew she shouldn’t be enjoying this so much, but she was.

“ _Herr_ Red-wolf,” Kurt said, his tail curling idly. “I do hope you took a pay cut along with your demotion. The General blamed you for our failure, I take it? He was right, you know. We were almost content to be Hounds, as long as we could be together. It was the separations and abuses you ordered that reawakened our need to be free, so no one could do that to us again.”

“Do you know how obscene you look, with your Hounds faces and those Raider uniforms splattered with _human blood_? It’s almost as obscene as that disgusting ‘domestic arraignment’ you were in. You had no right to be ‘content’, when my son never had a chance…” he cut his words off abruptly.

Kitty stepped forward; toying with the dirk she’d cut his phone line with. On the desk was a framed photo of a boy with a black ribbon across one corner. She picked it up to look closer. The image showed a young man in his early teens; perhaps as old as Kitty was when she was taken by Shield.

“Put that down! I don’t want your filthy hands even close to it,” Rudolf said.

She ignored him. “What happened to him?” she said as she showed it to Kurt.

“Nice enough looking boy,” Kurt said. “Too bad he had a monster for a father.”

“Monster!” Rudolf said, his face red with anger. “You’re the monster.” He lifted the pistol he’d stealthily taken from a desk drawer, and Kurt _bamfed_ beside him and snatched from his hand, following it up with a good right cross. The Shield man was shoved back against the wall in his chair, blood trickling from his lip.

“Give me that, Love,” Kitty said. Kurt handed her the handgun. She flipped it until it made a rough ‘v’ shape, butt end and muzzle tip topmost, and then carefully phased into the doorway, interposing it so it overlapped the bolt, the door frame, and the door. “That ought to keep you here for awhile.” Kurt nodded, his expression grimly accepting her decision.

“You want to know what happened to my son? A mutant. Because of a mutant like you, my son never got to grow up, never had a girlfriend, never will have a family…” Rudolf said. “It was perverse the way you two were allowed to _play house_ , when too many people, real _human_ people, were dying by mutant hands. It wasn’t right!”[*]

“What isn’t right is how you humans treat mutants, but we’re striking back,” Kitty said. “In a little under an hour, the Carrier will be crashing into the Gulf of Mexico.” She dumped the books out of a short metal bookcase, and overlapped that into the doorway as well, thoroughly jamming it. “I want to make sure that they can’t evacuate you. And somehow, I don’t think they’ll try very hard to save you.”

“Far more mutants are dying than humans, Rudolf,” Kurt said. “What you see as ‘pest’ control, we see as Genocide, and we will fight to prevent it. I would suggest you prepare to say hello to your son, but I sincerely doubt that you’re going to end up in the same place as him.”

“C’mon Kurt. It’s time to go,” she said. Kurt took her hand and they walked to the jammed doorway.

“You can’t… you can’t leave me here to die!” Rudolf said.

Kitty turned back to him. “You separated me from my husband. You gave our Trainers permission to rape and molest us. You are _evil_. It’s a little late to start appealing to our humanity, now. According to your kind, we don’t have any. Die, then, in the prison of your own making.”

“ _Auf Wiedersehen!”_ Kurt said, with a tight smile and a wave. Kitty pulled them through into the hallway where Jimaine was waiting.

“What took you so long,” Jimaine asked.

“Let us just say that we gave a devil his due,” Kurt said, his expression returning to a grim seriousness. “May God have mercy on our souls, for we had none for him.”

Jimaine asked them no more questions, and her magic took them back to a shuttle. The small fleet of space vehicles pulled back, letting Shield transport planes and cargo tugs land to retrieve whoever and whatever was possible. Kitty heard Jon over the radio, telling them they were now free to land on what was left on the Carrier, but not to take too long…

The broadcast to Shield shut off, and but Kitty could still hear what was going on in the other Shuttle. “Father?” It was Jimmy’s voice, and it sounded strained.

“Jimmy? What’s the matter?” Jon answered.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t take it anymore. I have to go and find her, now, while I’m so close to land. I’ll contact you when I’m ready to come back. Mama? I hope you can hear me. I love you all. Goodbye.” His voice stopped, and Kitty could only hear the sound of Jon cursing.

Jimaine gasped, and began to cry. “He’s hiding his position on the Winding Way from me. He’s never done that before.”

“Jimmy, dammit!” Jon said, his voice harsh with anger and loss. “He’s gone. He just… Vanished."[**]

“I’m sorry, Jon,” they heard Steve say. “I tried to hold him.”

“Nobody could keep him if he really wanted to go,” Jon said, his voice dull. “And who am I to keep him from the woman of his dreams?”

Jimaine looked off, her face still wet with tears. “Mother says this is a journey he must make, and that I shouldn’t interfere. It’s just… he’s my son…” She looked at Kurt. “If I had known where you were, I would have felt the same…”

Kurt embraced her, and Kitty stared out the window. She hoped the girl was worth it, to have caused so much pain to the ones she loved. If not, well, Kitty was just going to have to kick Jimmy’s ass when he came back…

 

A/Ns: [*] Finally, a chance to explain the reason why Rudolf did what he did. My bad guys don’t do things for no reason (except maybe Brad). It may be a bad reason, but there’s an understandable motive there, no matter how stupid it appears on the surface. I hope you enjoyed this chapter… the destruction of the Carrier is one of the things that readers of this story have been clamoring for since early in the story. =)

[**] Obviously the Vanisher, who had the power of long distance teleportation, is among the Dead.

In other news, my muse has cooperated enough to clearly reveal the rest of the arc of the first act, and most of the second. I operate better when I have a good idea of where I’m going and what I’ll need to be referencing on the way. /Yay! Now if only I knew where my drafts were.

The next two chapters happen **_simultaneously_** , with events both off and on the Asteroid. The next PoV character is Howie. (Who’s that? You’ll see… The regular Marvel Universe doesn’t just revolve around Mutants, and neither does this one. Next is a hint of the larger picture going on in this world.)


	5. Howie – Arsenal

[A/N: Okay, this one has a lot of stuff skimmed from outside of the Mutant storylines of the Marvel Universe… anything you can’t place, check the bottom, where I link to my on-line research for this chapter. Be aware that I haven't doubled checked the links I got several years ago, but you should be able to find the information referenced.]

 

< _Good afternoon, Howie_ ,> the machine said when the dark haired young man entered the secret chamber.

“Good afternoon, Mistress,” he replied, after sealing the passage behind him. He rubbed his blue eyes. Must do something about the dust down here.

< _I wasn’t sure you were going to make it today_ ,> Mistress said. < _There’s chatter all over the airwaves about the destruction of the Heli-Carrier. It seems the Mutants have begun striking back in earnest now._ >

“Yes, it does,” Howie Stark said. “Mom’s very concerned. Dad doesn’t take frustration well, and if he’s been drinking, he usually takes it out on her.”

The hazy suggestion of a woman’s face on the antique projection screen frowned in disappointment. < _Oh, Tony…_ > the computer murmured sadly, then continued, < _It might interest you to know that a powerful mutant signature has entered the City. Our detector is picking them up strongly_. >

“Show me,” Howie said, smirking a little from the memory of how he’d gained the device. Two years back, Wilson Fisk, the Mayor-Administrator of New York successfully lobbied to be one of the few communities hosting a Mutant detector. It was powered by a one of a handful of circuits scavenged from the ruins of Xavier’s mansion. They didn’t have much of a range, but unlike the original machine, it could be used without a telepathic operator.

Howard Stark the Second, as the son of a prominent Shield Official, was allowed to see the new technology while it was being installed. He wasn’t a mutant, but he sympathized with their plight, and he was determined not to allow Shield to have the machine functional. He built a convincing mockup of the critical circuit in his lab, and one night before its official unveiling, he broke in and replaced it with his simulation. None of the so-called technicians really understood how the circuit worked, so they couldn’t explain its sudden failure.

Mayor Fisk was enraged when the expensive new toy turned out to be faulty, and became even more so when Shield wouldn’t replace it. Fisk angrily ordered it to be scrapped, and Howie used his many clandestine business contacts to acquire the remainder of the technology as salvage. He’d smuggled it into his labs via submersible through the concealed East River tunnel to his family home, and reconstructed it with the genuine circuit in the sub-basements of the Stark Mansion, alongside all his other secret projects.

The Cerebro signal that Mistress showed him was the strongest he’d ever seen. There were usually a number of Mutants in the City; heavily guarded Sanitation workers, the private pets of local officials -- including Mayor Fisk, or the pitiful refugees down in the lower tunnels under New York City, but none of those held a candle to this Mutant. No telling what they were up to, but Howie had to find out.

“Deploy the Arsenal armor, please,” Howie asked her. A section of wall rotated to reveal the gleaming silver battlesuit that Howie had fashioned from his grandfather’s ultimate weapon. He smiled at it proudly; he’d constructed the suit from the guts of the Alpha prototype, because, like his grandfather, he didn’t trust the robot’s autonomous programming. Mistress directly controlled the Beta unit as a drone, and he’d refinished its dingy appearance to be identical to his bulky armor, so that she could cover for him, if need be.

Howie stepped up on the dais, and the front section of the suit came forward, separating from the back. He donned the snug body suit he wore within the armor, and then stepped backwards into the heavy boots. Leaning back into the suit, the hydraulics hissed as they mated the two halves together and locked them into place. Lastly he put on the heavy gloves, and a dome shaped helmet. Lights and control screens came on within the helm as the suit powered up. Now, he was the **_Arsenal_.**

“Stealth mode, Mistress,” he said. The suit darkened, turning a dull matte gray, and then flickering around the edges. A small lift brought him to a secluded spot in the gardens behind the Stark Manison, where he took off into the air. Mistress directed him to the Mutant’s location. He spotted the male, wearing a long dingy trench coat, walking in the Chinese slums, talking to himself. The young man was clean-shaven, but his green eyes contained a manic fevor. Arsenal activated a long-range microphone and trained it on the youth.

“…better be worth it, Stephen. I have more important things to do today.” The young man’s voice had a definite German accent, which caused Mistress to raise the threat rating display immediately. The target’s glittering eyes shot off to the side, and then turned forward again. The youth shook his head, “Yes, you say it will help me, and since I’m leaving as soon as I get what I came for…” Howie knew all about Mistress’s anti-Nazi prejudices, but didn’t necessarily agree the Mutant’s nationality was a factor. The mutant stopped and ran a hand through his light brown hair, frowned, and kept moving.

“He certainly seems unstable,” Arsenal said over his comm.

< _Typical of the Nazi breed_ ,> Mistress replied acidly. Two Shield security troops swaggered towards the youth. The youth made an odd gesture, almost like a casual wave, and walked right by the troops, who seemed to pay no attention to him.

“Okay, that was interesting,” he said. The youth veered into a warehouse, and Arsenal followed him. Tracing voices, Arsenal reached a vantage where he could watch his target, and what looked a bedraggled Chinese janitor. “Is the janitor a Mutant?” he asked Mistress.

< _No, Arsenal. The Cerebro only detects your target. >_

“Wong,” the young mutant said. “Your master sent me to you.”

“I beg your pardon, young sir. I don’t know what you mean.” The Chinese man bowed low to the Caucasian, his social superior under Shield Law.

The youth bowed stiffly in response, in the Prussian manner. “Doctor Stephen Strange sent you out of his home before it imploded. He put into your care a mystical artifact known as the Eye _of Agamotto_ , the signature item of Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme. I can feel it on your person, at this very moment.”

Wong’s eyes widened fractionally, and then he schooled his expression again. “These are… strange matters you speak of.”

“I am Jimmy Szardos, an acolyte of The Winding Way, and the Mutant Raider known as Legacy,” the young man said. “You are Wong of Kamar-Taj, Tibet, betrothed of Imei Chang, and the son of Hamir, who served the Ancient One, and descends from a long line of first born sons dating back to the honorable Kan of China.”

Wong’s expression lightened, as he stepped forward and clasped Legacy’s hand. “Indeed you must be from my master. How fares he?”

“Wong…” Legacy said. “He’s Dead. That’s my power; to channel the thoughts and abilities of those who have passed on. Stay close by me, and I will enable you to speak with him directly.”

Arsenal’s observation instruments broke into static after the youth made more hand passes. He was only able to retain visual contact with the others as they spoke to a piece of empty air until the static abruptly dropped away.

“Thank you, young master,” Wong said warmly. “Are you sure you won’t reconsider following in my master’s footsteps?

Legacy gave him a thin smile. “I was born with my feet on another Path, _freund_. Still, I will hold the Eye and the artifacts that it contains until I encounter someone suitable to take up the mantle of Earth’s magical protector. Until then, I will consider them to be loans, along with my gratitude.”

The janitor reached into a hidden pocket of his shabby jacket and drew out a small object that appeared to be an ornate brass eyeball. Once in Legacy’s hand, he attached it at his throat, and then pulled an elaborate scarlet cloak out of nothing. He made his trench coat vanish, and swirled the high-collared garment about him before he clasped Wong’s hands. “It has been a pleasure, Wong. I will come back another day, when I am not so pressed for time.”

“Of course, young master. Good luck in your endeavors, and remember that not all humans are the enemy of your kind.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Legacy said. He left the building, and took to the air, flying with the red cloak trailing behind him. Arsenal looked after him, disbelievingly, before activating his own flight circuits to follow. Legacy headed to downtown New York, then for the official district. At times Arsenal lost sight of the Mutant, but kept on the trail of his energy signature with Mistress’s help.

Alighting on a rooftop, Legacy put his hand to his head, and slowly turned about until he stiffened suddenly. Once again he flew, but this time on an arrow straight course, directly to the Mayor’s Mansion, landing on a building diagonal from it. Howie shook his head inside his helmet. He and his mother were supposed to have dinner with Mayor Fisk[*] on Thursday. Perhaps he stood a chance of getting out of the engagement.

Legacy looked to the Mansion, and then turned around, “And now, we wait, my armored shadow, until dinner time, and just after.”

Howie started in surprise. He was in stealth mode, how did Legacy…? “How did you know?”

The Mutant tapped his head. “When I searched for… who I’m looking for, I found you near me. You don’t seem to want to harm me, so I have no issue with you. I am curious as to how you could track me when my magic conceals me.”

“One thing at a time, Legacy." He extended his stealth field to include the Mutant. "What are you doing in the City,” Arsenal said.

“I am here to rescue a woman from vile bondage,” Legacy said. “She’s a mutant and Fisk has her. The things he has done to her over the years…” A hot anger infused his accented voice. “I cannot allow her to remain there another day.”

He'd known Fisk’s hostess was a Mutant. “Dion…?” Arsenal bit off his words.

“Yes, you do know them socially, don’t you.?” Legacy said wearily. “Did you ever see her with bruises, Arsenal? Because, I have. She comes to me in my dreams, sad and afraid, and sometimes… injured. He hits her, or lets his associates torment and rape her. Do you think I can leave her here anymore?”

Howie turned abruptly away from the mutant. The pain in Legacy’s voice resonated in his own heart. For as long as he could remember, he feared the rare occasions that his father Anthony Stark came home. He didn’t fear for himself; Tony doted on his only son, but he feared for his mother. Janet Van Dyne-Stark was a beautiful woman, but she didn’t particularly enjoy being Tony’s wife.

There were reasons for that, Howie had discovered with the help of the Mistress computer. It wasn’t just Dr. Henry Pym’s untimely death during his engagement to Janet, or the merciless pressure on her afterwards to marry the young Shield Scion. Nor was it the endless string of fluffy-headed mistresses that bothered Janet. No, it was the sporadic bouts of drunken rage and violent beatings that caused her estrangement from her husband.

Tony was always sorry afterwards, but that didn’t stop it from happening over and over again. When she threatened to tell the press about the abuse, Tony moved out of the family mansion to avoid a scandal, preferring to stay in the seat of power at D.C. with his girl toys. But while he left the Stark Estate as the residence of his wife and son, he refused to give her a divorce, and every so often he held an affair of state in the City, requiring his lovely wife to play hostess. But only Howie and Jarvis, the family butler, were there for Janet on the mornings after one of Tony’s benders.

“You’re angry, too,” Legacy said. “A woman you know is being abused… and you’re powerless to stop it.”

“You get that from my mind?” Arsenal snapped, turning back to the mutant.

“No, I got that from your stance. You heard what I said to Wong. My ‘source’ for telepathy is a principled man who wouldn’t do anything more than a cursory scan of you,” Legacy said. “However, I know that you’ve followed me throughout the City, and at the time of my scan, thoughts of hoping to get out of an unwanted social dinner with Fisk were on the surface of your mind.” He smiled grimly. “Even Mutants have ethics.”

Arsenal ran a gauntleted hand over his dome helmet. “Is she in there?”

Legacy turned his head a little. “Yes, she is,” he said, his voice soft.

“Then why don’t you get her now? Why wait?”

“I want to wait until she’s gone to dinner. She doesn’t have much, and I want to gather what she has.” An uncertain look came over Legacy’s face. “There’s something… she needs special care. You probably know more about that than I do. I think it has something to do with her… ability to touch.”

“Touch? Don’t you know?” Arsenal said.

“We’ve never met in person,” Legacy said. “Our connection is in our dreams, and between our souls.”

“How do you know she even wants to go with you, if she’s never met you?”

Legacy lowered his head, and sighed. In a near whisper, he said, “Even if it was all in my mind, I will be satisfied as long as she is free.”

Arsenal considered. “I’ve only seen Dion wear or touch expensive things; gold, silver, crystal, silk, fine china porcelain, for instance. She seems to avoid touching common materials.” A faint memory surfaced. “Once, Fisk had a Shield tie-pin, and she brushed it as she straightened his tie.  She winced, and I saw blisters on her hand, but when I looked again, they were gone. The next time I saw Fisk wear that pin, it had been recast in gold.”

“What did the first one look like?” Legacy said, bright green eyes flashing with interest.

“Ah, it looked like an ordinary cloisonné pin,” Arsenal said, and shrugged. “Enamel on steel.”

“Steel? Cold Iron…?” Legacy muttered. “That makes a sort of sense… I’ll wait, not just for her, because I also want to see Mayor Fisk.” He looked up at the hulking figure of Arsenal, and his smile was cold.

* * *

The lights of the suite they were watching went out, and Legacy flew over to the Mansion and cautiously approached the skylight. With a whisper of gently liquefying metal the window lifted out of the way along with its casing. Arsenal looked on with awe. Mistress fed him the sensor scans of the magnetic and gravitic anomalies that accompanied the display. Legacy could have literally torn his armor apart… but he hadn’t.

He watched from the ledge by the skylight as the Mutant dropped lightly inside and turned on the lights. Bamboo tatami mats concealed the floor, and hardwood paneling lined the walls. The furniture was both of natural materials and exquisitely made. On the foot of the massive mahogany wood four-poster bed was a neat stack of clothing, and a note.

“ _My darling James_ ,” Legacy read aloud. “ _You’ve come at last. I can feel you nearby, as I feel your worry and anger. But I am more worried about you. My keeper is a powerful man, in every sense of the word, and I fear that he will hurt you. These clothes will protect me, and if we are able, everything else that I really require, is in the carry bag under the bed. I don’t care about anything else here, only for you, and our freedom. Signed, Dion_.” Arsenal could hear the tremors in the other man’s voice.

From the top of the stack of clothes, Legacy shook out an all encompassing blue-gray cloak, and brought it to his nose. He breathed in deeply then picked up the things she’d left out and took them to a window seat below the open skylight where Arsenal stood. With a crooked smile, he took out a tiny box and put it on the bare hardwood floor after moving one the mats out of the way. With a sweep of his hand it expanded into a large chest. “No need to be deprived, my dear,” he said. More sweeps of his hands along with some muttered words that neither Arsenal nor Mistress understood, and the furnishing and objects in the apartment shivered and began falling into the chest, shrinking as they went. Dressers, tables, paneling, the bed and everything else disappeared into the container, until only the bare walls and subfloor remained.

Howie was glad that a helmet concealed his face, because he suddenly noticed his jaw hung open slackly. Legacy shot him a smirk as he re-shrunk the box and put it back into his pocket. “Mr. Fisk spared no expense to make her comfortable, in his fashion. Why shouldn’t I take advantage of that?”

“No reason, I guess,” Arsenal said. “It ought to really torque off Fisk, which is probably your intent.”

“Now, would I do that?” The wide grin Legacy turned to him seemed a bit on the manic side, but Howie couldn’t really blame the guy. He settled in to wait, and watch as Legacy paced the stripped floors. A little under an hour later, the Mutant tensed and looked towards the door, switching off the lights. Arsenal made sure his stealth was fully on, and waited with him. It was time for him to decide what side he was really on… that of Shield, or that of Justice…

In the hall beyond the door they could hear a deep masculine rumble, and the lighter tones of a young woman. There seemed to be some discussion, and then a large but solid man opened the door and led her in, his hand possessively at the small of her back. Dion was familiar to Howie from several tedious engagements, but Legacy seemed to drink her in. Pale skinned, and waifish in appearance, her violet eyes and long, glossy black hair gave her an arresting beauty.

Dion’s eyes widened at the sight of her bared room, and Fisk stood stunned as well. Legacy stepped from a shadow and pulled her from the Mayor’s loose grasp, and gave her a little push to the window seat. “Dress,” he said. She did so without question, while Fisk glared ferociously at the smaller man. Wilson Fisk was an imposing figure, over six foot, bald, and seemingly as broad as he was tall. He didn’t look obese so much as he looked… dangerous.

“What is the meaning of this?” Fisk roared. His meaty hands flexed, and he lunged at Legacy with surprising speed and grace.

Legacy floated lightly away from  his swipe and with a gesture held him back from Dion. “This is an emancipation, Mr. Fisk. You won’t have my Dion to abuse anymore.”

Fisk struggled against the forces holding him back, but he had no purchase to use his great strength. “ _Your_ Dion? Do you think I will let you take my property?” he growled. “Yes, I said mine, bought and paid for, not yours.”

Legacy stared back at him. “I think that you can’t stop me. You may be a big man, but that only helps if you can catch me.” With a jerk of his hand, Fisk went sailing out of the open skylight, missing Arsenal by inches.

“James! You didn’t kill him, did you?” Dion said, with one long opera glove on, and one still in her hand.

“No, darling. Finish and I’ll show you.” He came to the window and helped her put on the riding boots over her silk slippers. He looked completely besmitten, and Howie could absolutely understand. Instead of the cautiously neutral expression she usually wore, Dion was flushed with excitement and hope, completely transforming her from a captive trophy to a treasure of loveliness.

“What?” she said, curious why he stared at her so.

He touched her face lightly, with shaking fingers. “You are even more beautiful than I ever imagined… my best efforts could never come close to conveying you…”

She gave him an annoyed look and tossed her long black braid of hair over her shoulder as she fastened the grayish cloak at her throat and pulled it close around her. “Be serious.”

“I am,” he said simply. He held out his hands. “Come away with me.” She flowed like silk into his arms. He buried his nose into her ebon hair for a moment then they both flew out of the skylight, cloaked, quite literally, with magic.

Arsenal tracked them by Mistress’s Cerebro readings, as they hovered for a while to observe Fisk’s predicament; the fat man was dangling from a streetlight, the lamp’s arched metal neck was snaked up one pants leg, and continuing under his clothing, finally sticking out the collar of his expensive suit jacket.  A crowd was gathering, despite the efforts of Shield patrols, drawn by Fisk’s outraged bellowing. The sounds of slowly popping seams could be heard, and Arsenal saw people making furtive bets about when the finely tailored clothing would give way, plummeting the mayor to the pavement.

Arsenal was so amused, that Mistress had to tell him when the two mutants moved on, to the rooftop diagonally across from the mansion, where they had waited earlier. He followed them and the magical obscurement was lifted. “Is she all that you came for?” he asked Legacy.

“Yes, and I’ve just called for a shuttle to pick us up.” Szardos looked at him shrewdly. “Why did you really come out to follow me?”

Arsenal shrugged, “This is my City; I live here. I didn’t want a powerful Mutant to wreck the place. Not that I have a problem with Mutants… I don’t agree with the way you are being treated, but no one likes war to come their home.”

“And sometimes one has no choice but to go to the war,” Legacy said, frowning. “I’d still be at home in Germany with my tribe if my brother hadn’t been taken as a Hound. You can’t imagine the horrible things that Shield does… did there.” He smiled. “I’m pleased to have been a part of that raid. Downing the Carrier was a real blow to Shield.”

Howie frowned. “Well, your blow might have unintended consequences. My… Innocent people might get hurt because of it.”

Dion gave him a soft smile. “Janet is a strong woman, Howie. When I attended the ball at the Stark Mansion, I could tell she was an old hand at dealing with your father’s excesses.”

Legacy stared at her, and Howie sputtered. “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miss, but I’m not who you think I am.

She laughed like tinkling bells. “I’m an Empath, Mr. Stark. You are Howard Stark the Second, and I’ve danced with you, and enjoyed it.” Legacy frowned and she turned back to him. “Don’t be jealous, love. It was rare enough that I was able to spend time with a gentleman who didn’t regard me as a piece of meat. Howie may be human, but he’s one of the good guys.”

Legacy, nodded reluctantly. “Wong said not all humans are enemies.” He raised his chin and stuck his hand out.

Howie looked at it, and reached up to take off his helmet. < _Caution_ ,> Mistress said in his ear, < _your intended action is inadvisable… >_ He ignored her and tucked the dome helm under his left arm, took off his right glove, and shook the proffered hand, flesh to flesh.

“Howie Stark,” he said with a smile, “since we weren’t formally introduced.” He rubbed his matted down hair and made a rueful face.

“Jimmy Szardos, but I bet you already knew that,” Jimmy said. “And this is Dion…?”

“…Stevens, soon to be Szardos.” Jimmy grinned foolishly at her words, while she held her hand out to Howie. He took her gloved fingers gently and bestowed a light kiss on them.

< _Gravitic aircraft vectoring in_ ,> they all heard Mistress say from the radio at Howie’s collar.

“Almost at yer location, Legacy,” said a gruff voice from a comm. unit on Jimmy’s belt. “And I gotta tell ya kid, yer folks sure ain’t happy with ya.”

“I think that’s your cue, Howie,” Dion said, but he was already putting his armor pieces back on.

“Good luck to you,” he said to Jimmy and Dion both.

“And to you,” Jimmy said.

Arsenal nodded and took off as the shuttle swooped in, bending light around it in a manner similar to the method his armor employed. He cloaked again and held position off the edge of the roof as a short hairy man came out of the vehicle, and sniffed the air like a beast. _Oops, the Wolverine._ Guess it really was time for him to go. He turned away from them, and started the flight back home. “How’s it going at the Mansion?” he asked Mistress.

< _Mr. Jarvis is looking for you. It seems that your father had scarcely arrived before he was called away… unexpectedly._ >

“Gee, I wonder why?” Howie said sarcastically. The City patrols were on high alert, so he diverted into the river, and traveled the flooded tunnel under the streets until he reached the Submersible dock feeding the water cooling systems that were an integral part of Mistress. Quickly he got on the dais and backed the armor into the support clamps and stepped out of it as soon as it opened. He took off the helm and gloves, doused his head in water, and changed into his regular clothes. Slipping though the concealed panel while dragging a comb through his hair, he entered the upper basement workshops where his family _thought_ he spent his time.

Howie heard Edwin Jarvis call for him, and wished again that he could tell the loyal servant what he was really up to down here…

“Jarvis?” he called back. “Sorry, I was just using some equipment, and I didn’t hear you.”

The balding man came up to him and gripped his arms in relief. “I wish you wouldn’t leave the upper basements without notice, young sir. If something happened, how could we find you?”

“Excuse me?” Howie answered, his heart pounding in his chest.

Jarvis gave him a stern look. “I was a young man then, but I was here when your grandfather and namesake constructed these chambers, Mr. Stark. I know there are far more rooms down here than these. Ordinarily I wouldn’t say anything, but your mother has been very concerned today.”

Howie shook his head. “I should’ve known I couldn’t fool you…”

The butler looked slightly smug. “Certainly not, young sir. But we’ll talk about that later. Your mother wants to talk to you about what she heard happened today.”

“And I’ll give you a tour later, right?” Howie said

Jarvis just smiled back, and accompanied him to the elevator.

* * *

Dinner was quiet at the Stark Mansion. By the time Howie or his mother were served dessert, Tony would have begun to get roaring drunk, if he’d been with them. “Pleasant night, isn’t it, Mom?” he said.

“Indeed,” she said. She looked down the table at him levelly. “I wish you would try to get along with your father better. Just because I have… issues with him, doesn’t mean that you should.”

“Mom… he never sees you cry. I do,” he said. “I have never heard him apologize to you, and I won’t forgive him until he does.”

“He’s the only father you have,” she said, sighing. “It’s important for a boy to have a father.”

Howie sighed. “Mom, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a boy anymore.”

“A man does more than play about in workshops,” she said. “A man fights for what he believes in.”

He smiled. “Just because you haven’t heard about it, doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing just that.”

Janet narrowed her eyes as she finished her dessert.

Jarvis appeared in the doorway of the dining room with a concerned expression, shortly before the master of the house entered the room.

“Darling,” Tony Stark said to Janet. “I hate to spoil your plans for the evening, but duty calls. I have to go back to D.C. tonight.” He crossed the room to her side, and kissed the air near to her cheek. “Please try to contain your disappointment,” he said with subdued sarcasm.

“I will try to manage without you,” she said coolly. “Howie? Speak to your father.”

Howie stood. “Goodnight Father,” he said, trying to think of something… neutral to say. “It won’t be the same without you.”

“I’ll just bet it won’t.” Tony didn’t attempt to approach his son, with good reason, Howie thought, as he struggled to unclench his fists. Civility was so… difficult sometimes. “I must take you with me sometime, Howie. Give you a taste of real power.”

Howie gave a bark of laughter. “Trust me father, I have all the power I can manage right here.”

A look of confusion crossed Tony’s face, before he gave a genial nod to his wife, and turned away. Howie smirked at his back, and shared a look with Jarvis.

Janet sipped her champagne, and noted the dynamics of the others. There was something interesting going on in her home, and she meant to find out just what it was…

 

 

[*] Wilson Fisk is the criminal known as **_Kingpin_** in the 616 universe.

A/N: I try to ground my fiction on solid canon foundations… Here’s the reference research I did for this chapter.

About the comicverse Stark Mansion: - (http://www.marveldirectory.com/misc/avengermansion.htm ). Note the info on Sub-Basement Level Two.

About the Arsenal(s): - ( http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix3/arsenal.htm ). _Heh, I have the Avengers issue with the first appearance of Beta…_

About Mistress: - ( http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix2/mistressarsenal.htm ). _…and of the Mistress, a computer Howard Stark created with the engrams of his lost wife_ , _Maria._

About Dr. Strange: - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strange). Some of Strange’s artifacts fall into Legacy’s hands this chapter, and...

About Wong: - (http://www.marveldirectory.com/individuals/w/wong.htm ). There's more to this fellow than I thought, and I used to collect Dr. Strange comics.

[Tony was going to be a butthole in these stories even before the “Civil War” storyline came out in the comics. Without his injury or Vietnam (or other foreign conflict to motivate him), and with the seduction of power that Shield offers to the elite, a socialite like him had no motivation to get into science, or to fight injustice. Ironically enough, he did provide the motivation for his son to take on the role of the _Iron Man_ in my universe.]


	6. Raven – Histories from Hell

[This chapter begins concurrently with the previous one. Jimmy and Dion return to the Asteroid half way through this one.]

Raven helped the Raiders sort out the Hounds once they returned to the Asteroid. Following the recommendation of Kurt and Kitty, the genders were segregated again, until the ones who’d likely resort to rape were weeded out of the populations. Both the former Hounds had an antipathy for a male Hound named Stalker, or ‘Brad’[*], she noticed. At least the Raiders didn’t have any illusions that all the Hounds were going to fit in here. Some of them were little more than dangerous animals now, animals she didn’t want around her children.

Marie was placed in a separate secure holding cell, and when Raven found out where, she went to Jimaine, and asked her, “Can you help me with my daughter?”

Jimaine’s expression was worried. “I… I don’t know. I’m so worried about James. I don’t know if I can concentrate right now. Can it wait?”

Raven gritted her teeth, and then calmed herself with an effort. “Marie is my daughter in the same way that Kurt is yours. What would you have done if you had the opportunity to help him when he needed it?” Raven said.

The Gypsy woman looked at her appraisingly. “Maybe we have more in common than I realized; each caring for a child of the blood, and a child of the heart. Very well, Raven. At least it will keep me from fretting about my foolish boy.” Jimaine gathered some of her occult gear, and went with Raven.

“Thank you, Jimaine,” Raven said, as they walked. “I’m upset about this other personality she has. Are you sure that it is a fully separate personality? Could it be some kind of mental break, a result of her captivity?”

“I’m thinking it is a true second personality,” Jimaine said. “I have other suspicions, but those will have to wait for Jimmy’s return.”

Raven could see Becky loitering outside the security quarters where Marie was being held. The girl came up and clung to her. “Oh, mom! Are you here to help? I’m so glad to see you… and you, Miss Szardos.” She held her hand out, and Jimaine clasped it warmly.

“Surely we’re not so formal?” Jimaine said, looking at Raven.

A stab of jealous uncertainty went through Raven’s gut, though she kept it from showing on her face. She hated to share Rebecca’s affections with anyone. She feared if she lost primacy in her daughter’s heart, that she’d never get it back. Still, she needed the woman’s help. Putting on a facile smile, she said, “Would you mind if she called you ‘Aunt’?” At least Jimaine wasn’t as much as a threat as the Boy Scout…

“Certainly, if that’s okay with you, Becky?” Jimaine said with a friendly wink. Becky gave the woman a quick hug, and Raven felt Becky’s absence from her side like a shock of cold, before the girl turned back to her and gave Raven a kiss on the cheek.

Becky gestured at the video monitor set in the wall, showing the room. The gaunt, hollow eyed Hound was pacing monotonously back and forth across the room. Her hair was lank, and the unfamiliar shock of white showed vividly among the auburn strands. Raven shivered. The desolation on the girl’s face was similar to the look she’d seen in the mirror not long ago, wearing her slave's leash in the quarters of the false Rogers.

“Raven?” Jimaine said.

She sighed. “I don’t think she cares if she lives or dies. I’ve been there. And if I’m judging her right, she’s leaning on death being the better option. I’ve been _there,_ too…” Raven shook her head. “Can you tell which of them is in charge?” Jimaine produced a fist-sized crystal ball. With a frown of concentration, an image appeared; it was a woman, tense and furious, with bobbed blonde hair and-chilly blue gray eyes.

She stalked in unison with the movements of the girl in the monitor, and they could compare the two. ‘Carol Danvers’ was tall and athletic, with the air of a caged lioness. The girl whose body she inhabited was painfully thin and slight, and seemed huddled in on herself.

Raven turned to the witch, “Can you make her sleep again? We need to talk to Marie, not… this ‘agent’.”

“Yes,” Jimaine said, “but she has a very strong will. She might develop a resistance to the magic, or she might break the enchantment if she’s provoked enough.

“We have to take that risk,” Raven said. “If we are to save her, or save them, even.”

Jimaine nodded and focused on the woman pacing in the crystal. Almost immediately, she slowed, and soon she yawning and stumbling. Giving in to fatigue, she slumped on the bed and laid her head down, finally at rest. Raven triggered the door and the three women came in. Raven sat in a bedside chair near Marie, while Becky perched on the end of the bunk. Jimaine leaned against the wall near the door.

“Marie?” Raven said. “Marie?” Becky nudged her foster sister’s foot with her own.

The pale girl sat bolt upright, eyes wide, startling all in the room. She cringed away from her family’s closeness. “Don’t touch me!” she said. “Gawd, don’t touch me… You can’t touch me.”

Raven tilted her head. “Why can’t you be touched, Marie?”

The girl lowered her head, hair masking the incriminating tattoos. “It’s… my power. I… drain people. Their minds… memories… their powers. I’m a monster, ‘cuz of it. A mur… murderer, mama.” Her hoarse words trailed off into choked sobs.

Raven leaned back in the chair. “My… daughter-in-law was a Hound. Her power is to walk through solid objects. That’s all, she phases. It’s Shield that turned her into an assassin, not her power. If you are a murderer, as you say, it’s Shield that made you one, not your power.”

Marie frowned, and rubbed her face with her gloved hands. “Shadowcat? What… your daughter-in-law?” She shook her head in confusion. “I’m supposed to kill her.” She muttered to herself.

“Not anymore,” Becky said. “You’re not a Hound anymore, just like she isn’t either.”

Marie snorted in derision, touching her face again, tracing the marks there. “I’ll always be a Hound, Becky. Once they mark ya, they always own ya. You can’t know what it’s like…”

She shook her head, concern starting to break through her misery. “Look… ya gotta be careful. I got her powers, all of them, and I dunno when she’s coming back.”

“There’s nowhere for her to go, Marie,” Jimaine said. “We’re aboard Asteroid M. And by ‘she’ I assume you mean Agent Danvers? Don’t worry, she’s asleep.”

A wince passed over Marie’s face. “Yeah, Danvers… She was a Captain in the Air Forces, ‘til she got demoted for possessing a double x chromosome… that’s how she thinks of it.” She gave Jimaine a sharp look. “I don’t know you lady, what are you doin’ here?”

Raven tried to put her hand over Marie’s gloved hand, and failed to entirely mask her look of sadness when the girl instinctively flinched away. “Her name is Jimaine Szardos, a Gypsy Sorceress. She raised my eldest child in Germany from infancy. You might know him as Nightcrawler. He and Shadowcat officially got married here not long ago. That’s why I call her my daughter-in-law.”

“He’s yours? Yeah, I can see it.” She laughed a little, bitterly. “I remember now. You’re one of the main reasons that they go ta sterilize us. They found out from me about Becky, and they linked ya to him from your blood work. You showed them that Mutants can breed true, and that scares the piss outta ‘em.”

It was Raven’s turn to wince. “Well, I could.” She touched her stomach briefly. “I guess I was unsuitable to be a Hound, but I did catch the Leader’s eye, as his… courtesan.”

“Oh, mama…” Her dull green eyes showed a sparkle of empathy, and then her face twisted with worry again. “I mean it about her… She’ll consider this enemy territory, and try to bust out… and hurt people.”

Jimaine shook her head. “You’re already in one of the most secure areas of the Raider’s headquarters. You don’t need to worry about your other personality escaping.”

“Yeah?” Marie said. “Well, I guess it’s better than the last cell I was in.”

“What did you mean that you had her powers, all of the time?” Raven asked.

“It’s usually temporary, the draining, I mean. Maybe I should start at the beginning?” Marie said.

“Probably a good idea, kiddo,” Raven said. A tremulous smile crossed Marie’s face, the first such expression Raven had seen on her other daughter.

“’Kay. I was caught in a High School sweep. I kept expectin’ ya to get me out, even though I knew you were outta town…” Marie sighed. “Anyway, they didn’t know what my power was, and neither did I, so they sent me to the South East Processing Center. Those centers are where they take most mutants, and figure out what they’re good for. Just in case, they ‘fixed’ me, so I’d be ready for any assignment. Guess I was pretty enough to be considered for… what did you call it? A courtesan? And if nothing else, they figured I could do that.”

Raven pinched the bridge of her nose, fully able to imagine just what kind of pervert would want to _own_ a girl of Marie’s age.

“They tried to startle me, scare me, and hurt me and stuff to get me to reveal my powers, but nothing worked until the…” she gestured at her stomach, “the bandages came off and I was declared fit for ‘general duty’.” Marie grimaced and stared at the floor. “I guess that meant servicin’ them, too, ‘cause the director of my block came into my cell that night to cure me of my little ‘virginity problem’.” Her voice wavered. “He ripped my clothes off, and started… raping me. He was only halfway… done… when I felt my skin getting’ all hot, where it touched his. I started getting’ all his memories in my head.”

Marie tangled the fingers of both hands in her auburn and white hair, pulling at it, and kept going. “He just… stopped. Passed out on top of me. And I knew what it felt like to rape myself, and a million other girls, not all of them Mutants, like I was the one doin’ it. It was getting’ hard to breath, so I pushed him off, easier than I shoulda been able to. I took his key card outta his pocket, and was able to reach though the bars and open my cell door.” She twisted a lock of her hair around in a way that Raven knew, yet didn’t know. Marie used to do it all the time, but never so harshly.

“He knew all the ins an’ outs of the place, and I’d gotten dressed and was pretty far before I started forgettin’ the codes. About then the director woke up and started yelling. So, they caught me, and drugged me so I’d tell ‘em what happened. They put me in solitary lockup, and they tested me. Anytime I touched someone skin ta skin I’d get their memories for a while, and if they were mutants I’d get their powers, too. Sometimes I’d even look a little like ‘em, like when I was made to drain this worker named Ox…” She shuddered, hard. “It didn’t take ‘em long to figure out how to rape me again… put me in a crotchless body suit, when they wore a condom…”

“Why?” Becky said, hot tears in her eyes, “Why do they keep using rape as a weapon? Kitty, You, and Mom…”

Marie cringed from Becky’s anger, and shook her head mutely. “Because they’re _men_ ,” Raven said, coldly. “It’s what they do.” They were harsh words, but it was better that the girl learned this truth now.

Jimaine gave Raven an annoyed expression. “ _Some_ men, Becky. Through time immemorial it has been the tool of the oppressor against women, and other men, as well. Rape is a function of power, not of desire, or even gender. If the one in the position of power is female, she’s almost as likely to do it as a man. Kurt was molested, too, and it was by female agents.”

“You said ‘almost’ as likely, and men are raped as well,” Becky said, looking between the older women.

Jimaine shrugged. “Men are stronger, and more aggressive, so that dynamic is likelier where the motive is sheer violence and brutality. Also, women can be impregnated, where the motive is ongoing humiliation, and to dilute the woman’s race. A child of rape is a constant reminder of the attack. When it comes to Mutants, impregnation isn’t a factor, so the answer is sheer naked power.”

As she spoke, Raven was overwhelmed by a memory she’d long ago chosen to forget, of what she’d done to a man who’d dared to abuse her. She’d found a way to turn the tables on him, and the fear she’d seen in his eyes was so compellingly sweet she'd done the unthinkable to him in her rage... just because she could… She shook free of the images, to see her innocent daughter looking at her, curious to see if Raven would argue the point. “It _is_ power,” she agreed, her voice strained. Becky’s expression turned to concern, but she gave the girl a look that both her daughters knew better than to question.

“You’ve got yer ghosts, too, doncha mama?” Marie said.

She turned to her foster daughter and nodded shortly. “Go on, Marie.”

The girl folded up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. “They did a lot of tests, an’ decided I was too weak to be a Hound. Any mutant with strength could hold me off if he knew what I could do, and those with distance powers could also take me out. They wanted me to be strong enough to get to my targets,” Marie paused, and continued on in almost a whisper. “…and that’s where _she_ came in.”

“Agent Danvers,” Raven said.

“Yeah, her. I’ve learned some things about her, from what they’ve said around me, but sometimes, it’s not me in here, it’s her."

“Listen to me carefully, Marie,” Jimaine said. “From the standpoint of magic, you are the rightful owner of your body. She has no right to it, so the advantage is yours.”

Marie grimaced. “She’s older ‘n I am, an’ stronger.” Her voice was full of apprehension and fear.

“Only if you allow her to be,” Jimaine said.

“I guess,” Marie didn’t look convinced. She stared at the cell wall, and sighed. “She’s from Boston, from a line of military men, and she wanted to prove to her daddy she was as tough as any boy. It’s hard to be a woman in the Shield Armed Forces, ‘specially if you wanna be an officer. By bein’ tougher and meaner than any of ‘em, she got some commissioned rank in the Air Service.” She looked over at them, her eyes sad. “She still couldn’t get any respect, though. When Shield got their hands on some Alien gizmos, they sent her in as a guinea pig. They tried out this gadget called a ‘Psycho-Magnetron’ that changed her DNA to be similar to the Kree Aliens. She didn’t look any different, but she could fly on her own power, and she was really strong.” She rubbed her face, subtly tracing the tattoo marks. “They used her sorta like a super Hound for awhile, because she wasn’t a mutant, and she was loyal.”

Raven noticed that while Marie was speaking in the third person, her body’s subliminal tells showed she was reacting as is she was describing things that happened to her personally.

“I guess she got too cocky, or her superiors started thinking about it… here’s this woman, an untrustworthy beast in the first place, with super powers, and she could turn on them an betray ‘em. They couldn’t officially treat her like a mutant, and she was too tough to break an’ too stubborn to quit. They started using any little excuse to bust her, and drummed her outta the Air Service, and then left her with no choice but to become an Agent on the Carrier. She helped ‘em train Hounds, and all the while they were looking for something to do about the danger she represented, somethin’ permanent.”

She got up and started pacing. “Then someone got this bright idea. Here they had a set a’ powers controlled by a stubborn mind, and they had someone with a weak will, me, who could steal powers. If only they could add A ta B…” She stopped by the bed and put a hand on the rolled steel arch that served as a headboard. With no apparent effort she squeezed the metal and crumpled the quarter inch pipe like it was a cardboard tube. She let go and jumped up a little, and floated in the air for an impossibly long moment. “I can stay in the air all day. As you can see, they found a way to do it.” She settled back down on the ground.

“But how do you still have the powers, Marie?” Raven said. “Didn’t you say that the powers you borrowed faded eventually?”

“Yeah, I did.” She sat slumped on the bed, her feet set ungainly apart. “They hauled me up ta the Carrier an’ gave me my war paint.” She gestured a little towards the Hound tattoos on her face. “After they got me settled in, and working on what it meant to be a Hound, they had me take her power, and train with it. She didn’t like it, but orders were orders.”

Marie sighed and hung her head. “The General wasn’t happy ‘bout the length a’ time I kept the powers, so when it was time for my first mission… they strapped her to a chair, and two agents held my hands on her, as I got her memories and powers… they held me there longer than I’d ever touched anyone since I activated. They kept holdin’ me on her while she struggled and screamed, and finally… she passed out. It felt like a piece of her got stuck inside me, the same piece that I have today.”

She lifted her head, flinging the auburn and white hairs out of her eyes with a toss of her head. “I kept the power throughout the mission, and after. A couple a’ days later, everybody figured out that I had the powers for good. I could feel her, raging in my head, pissed off at being a part of a filthy mutie like me. I didn’t see her again; I didn’t need to, I had the powers. And then, they offered me a way to get my mission card an’ be a real Hound… An’…”

The pained look on her face turned suddenly into one of fury. “No! Shut up, girl!” She turned hard blue eyes harshly on them, “Freaks! Monsters! Murderers! If you think you can get rid of me, you’re wrong! This bitch owes this life to me, and I mean to keep it!”

Jimaine tried to make her sleep again, but she shook her head fiercely and lunged for Becky, apparently the weakest of the group. The pale blue girl somersaulted out of the way, and with Jimaine’s magic, they held the furious Hound’s other persona off until the three of them got out of the room.

“We need reinforcements,” Raven said, "but who?”

“Dad,” Becky said. “If she’s Shield through and through, she’ll respond to the Captain.”

Raven frowned. She hated to rely on the Boy Scout, but if he could help Marie…

“Mama! Came Kurt’s voice, as he galloped down the hallway towards them. “Jimmy’s back, and _she’s_ with him!”

“The hangar deck?” Jimaine asked. At his nod, she looked at Raven. “We’ll get back to this, Raven. Jimmy may be able to help as well, with his powers as a medium, if what I believe is true.”

Kurt _bamfed_ away, and Raven fought her frustration, as she followed her daughter and the Sorceress. She supposed the prodigal son would have to be dealt with first.

Jon waited for them at the Hangar bay, and put an arm around his lady. Kurt and Kitty were also there to greet the ungrateful wretch. Raven hoped the boy got what was coming to him… _Oh, my...,_ she thought.

Jimmy stepped out after Logan, with a bag over his shoulder, and his arm around a figure muffled in a large cloak. His own form also was draped in a rather flamboyant red cape, but he had eyes only for her, as she drew her hood back and looked around the vaulted room. Raven could see stunned expressions on those about her as they could see that his artwork in no way exaggerated her beauty. “Are you okay?” Jimmy said.

She smiled at him and nodded. “I should be able to live here. Fresh air, natural stone, and solar lighting are all good. As long as I’m not exposed to machinery too much I’ll be fine.” She pulled off her long gloves and walked forward to meet those who waited for them. She stopped at Jimaine. “He showed me his mother’s face, Mother Szardos, I’m pleased to finally meet you. Please don’t be angry with Jimmy, he was just trying to help me.” To Jon she smiled, “How much he looks like you. You’re his father?”

Jon nodded. “I’m Jon Magnusson. Welcome to Asteroid M, Dion.” He held out his hand and shook hers, tilting his head as he analyzed her powers with his own. "Regeneration..."

Her violet eyes widened, and she spun about in delight. “And you _must_ be Kurt! You can be no other; who else would look like this?” She raised her hand and stroked his indigo cheek, frowning when she felt the scar ridges there. Kurt, in turn, took her hand in his and bowed over it before gracing her knuckles with a small kiss. Kitty scowled, and Dion turned to her. “You needn’t be jealous,” she said softly. “Jimmy is all I want or need. I just feel that your man is like a brother to me.”

Kitty grimaced.  “I guess I am jealous. You’re as beautiful as Jimmy said you were.”

“So are you, little tiger,” Dion said, but the look on Kitty’s face showed she disagreed. Dion handed her gloves to Jimmy, and reached for Kitty’s face, ignoring the flinch as she traced the tattoo marks with her fingers that trailed a soft golden glow. Kitty hissed, and raised her chin stubbornly, but refused to pull away, even as her eyes watered from the stinging that followed the other girl’s touch.

Raven saw Kurt stare, his mouth agape, as dark fluid beaded up through Kitty’s skin, then trickled down into his wife’s collar, all washed with the yellow light that shone from Dion’s hands. Line after black line was brought to the surface, and gently wiped away, leaving behind only reddened, but unmarked, skin. Finally Dion lowered her hands and drew in a weary breath, as the golden light faded. She turned to Jimmy, and pulled out a small silver mirror from the bag he carried and showed Kitty her reflection. Kitty reached out with trembling hands and took the mirror, looking at every bit of her features without the tattoos. Already the redness was mostly faded; showing Kitty’s true face.

“I’m a healer,” Dion said. “I can fix the marks, and reverse the sterilizations, too, though those will take longer. I reversed my own a long time ago, and on the flight here, I removed the remaining scars. I’m not a fighter, and I don’t do well around technology, but if you let me, I can help your efforts.”

Kitty thrust the mirror back at Dion, and threw her arms around Kurt’s neck. “God, Kurt, do you see it? Is it true?”

“I see it, Kätzchen,” he said, “but I have to tell you a secret…” She looked up at him questioningly. In a pretend whisper, he said, “You have always been beautiful to me, my wife.” Her tears spilled down her cheeks, as he swept her off her feet and kissed her soundly.

Jimmy caught Dion by her elbow, “You can have children, love?” he said eagerly.

“Of course,” she laughed. “But just because I could, didn’t mean I would, with any of _them_. And it probably will be a while until I’m ready, anyway.”

“You’re a miracle,” Jimmy breathed. “I feared my mother would never have any grandchildren because of Shield, and now, she will, someday.” He kissed her as she blushed prettily.

Logan turned to Jon, who still looked stunned. “Hard to stay mad at yer kid when he pulls off something like this, huh?”

Jon gave a shaky laugh, “In one of your words, Logan? Abso-fraggin'-lutely.”

* * *

The next day, the three women, Jimmy, and the Captain in his original uniform gathered in front of Marie’s cell. The men had just been briefed on all that they’d learned yesterday. The monitors showed her pacing, which proved she was Carol most of the time, because Marie seemed far more listless and apathetic.

Jimmy looked surprised. “She’s one of the Dead. Partially anyway, but she’s not cooperating, or at rest. She’ll need to come to terms with her state before I can work with her.” Raven frowned at the ‘dead’ comment. Marie was… _haunted_?

“Well, that’s my cue,” Rogers said. “Let me talk to her first.”

Raven shrugged. “If you want to, Rogers.”

Becky gave her an exasperated look at the faintly mocking tone. “Mom, now is not the time.”

Raven nodded, acknowledging her point, and took a breath. “Please help her,” she said, to a point just past Steve. “She’s my daughter, too, and a sister to Becky.”

Rogers cocked his head, and nodded. “Alright, Raven,” and he strode into the room.

The Hound with the cold blue eyes spun on him, and gasped. Then her eyes narrowed, and she glared at him. “Nice costume,” she sneered. “Now take that pretend shield out of here before I crumple it like a wad of paper.”

“Try,” he said, and tossed it to her.

She snatched it up and immediately tried to bend the colorful disc, only to fail, panting. “What trickery is this?” She flung it at a wall, and it bounced and rebounded until he caught it easily in mid-air.

“No trick. It’s the genuine article, and so am I.” He threw a thick folder he was holding down on the bed, and pushed back his cowl. “I’m the real Steve Rogers. I was frozen in the North Atlantic Ocean after a ship explosion, and Shield found me years ago. The first section has the records that the Raiders retrieved along with me. They detail the time that I spent in a block on ice in a Shield lab, being experimented on. The second section shows how the Raiders thawed me out.”

“The Great Leader is an old man, now, and you’re young,” she said, suspicion in her eyes.

“He’s no ‘Great Leader’!” He reached in at his neck and pulled off the dog tags that he still wore around his neck, and tossed them next to the folder. “He’s a damned Nazi.”

She stared at him, almost mesmerized. Shaking her head, she picked up the tags and studied them. Then she picked up the folder, looking at the Shield seals and stamps on the laboratory paperwork. When she got to the next section she followed the procedures they used as they thawed him. As she read, she kept glancing at him, as if trying to catch him at some sort of trick.

The last section was the history of the Skull. Born Johann Schmidt, he was a poor bellhop at a hotel where Hitler held a meeting with his chief officers. He was present in the room when the Fuhrer railed that they were all disgraces to their uniforms, and that he could train this lowly bellhop to be a better Nazi than any of them. Schmidt eagerly stepped up to the challenge, and soon surpassed all of Hitler’s men in sheer dedication, and evil. His infamous Skull mask was designed to terrorize, and show the fearsome might of National Socialism, while the Fuhrer was free to portray the benevolent ruler.

After Hitler was killed, and with Rogers turning up missing, Schmidt had himself surgically altered to look like his greatest enemy, and went to America as it’s famed war hero, setting in motion the events leading to the present day. Carol shook her head. “No, it can’t be…”

“What were America’s values during the war,” he asked her, “and what are they now?” He paced slowly across the room. “Do they still teach the Founding Fathers and their writings in schools? The Declaration of Independence? The Constitution? The Bill of Rights? Does anyone still read the Federalist Papers?” He frowned at the stunned look on her face. “Just because I’m a farm boy from the Midwest, doesn’t mean that I don’t know what this country used to be about. What is a ‘President-for-life’, if not a King? Doesn’t every bit of history, philosophy, and the documents that are the foundation of this Nation preclude its having a King? Well?”

“It’s just… these are unprecedented times… He’s protecting our safety,” she stammered. “From the enemy…”

“Which enemy?” he barked at her, making her jump. “The Jews? The Negroes? Mutants? Little girls, like the one who’s body you’re in now? What did Marie ever do to Society, or to you? Was it trying to live a normal live that made her an enemy? Going to High School? _Breathing?_ She’s a person, and people are all different. Some are saints and some are sinners. Some are upstanding individuals and some are monsters. When you make some fragment of humanity ‘The Enemy’ or 'The Other', you wipe all those distinctions away. You can treat the best of them the same as you treat the worst of them, because you’ve denied that they’re human. What did Marie ever do to deserve to be taken to a camp and forcibly sterilized and systematically raped? To be branded like an animal and trained to kill on command by consistent brutalization?”

His eyes bore into hers, and she looked back, uncertain. “I… she…” she stammered. “She killed me!” The accusation came out in a breathless rush, infused with her anger and loathing. She collapsed on the bed, sitting slumped with her hands covering her face.

Rogers stopped short. He drew up a chair near her and sat in it, resting his big hands on the Shield in front of him. “Tell me about it,” he rumbled softly.

Out in the hallway, Raven looked at the others. “Damn. The Boy Scout’s good at this.” Jimmy nodded, but Becky frowned at her a little.

Back in the room, the Danvers persona answered the Captain. “After… after she gained my powers permanently, I don’t know what happened to me… Danvers. But the next thing we… I know is, our Trainer is offering to give me my mission card, as a Hound named Rogue, in return for performing an execution. Being a Hound sucks, especially if you used to be on the other side of the game, but being a trainee Hound sucks worse. I accepted.”

She grimaced. “They sent me into a room, and this woman in a Hound’s jumpsuit and hood was shackled to a chair. They told me to use my hands to kill her. I put my hands around her neck and choked her. When she started struggling to breathe I snapped her neck to end it. Then… then they told me to take the hood off… and it was me… _my_ face… Carol Danvers’ face… and she… I… was dead. I was cheated… over and over!”

“By who, Carol? Who cheated you? Was it Marie?” he prompted her. She turned a stubborn expression to him. He turned to the door and gestured for the rest of them to come in. Raven and the others entered, and Danvers rose, bristling. “Sit down, Danvers!” he snapped. “Do you believe what you read in the third section?”

“I don’t know. By your own admission, you’ve been frozen all this time. How would you know?” she said.

“It’s the kind of thing he would have done,” he said, and then shrugged. “But you’re right, I don’t know this directly, but I believe her.” He nodded at Raven, his eyes asking for her cooperation, just this once.

“I was his slave for the last year,” Raven said. “I tried to rescue Marie, but I missed her, and then I got caught. They sterilized me like the rest, and although I’m a fighter they judged me to be too stubborn to be a Hound, and too weak to be a Worker. So I was chained to your Great Leader’s bed, with just enough lead to reach the kitchenette and the bathroom.” She displayed her wrist, which still showed the scars and galls of her shackle. “He’d tell me about his childhood in Germany, and how he was trained by Hitler himself. To this day, he exults in his role, because he knows that history will record that Steve Rogers was a totalitarian dictator, known for advancing the cause of everything the real Captain would despise, and the enemy of everything Rogers truly espouses.”

“I don’t just say those things, Raven,” he said mildly. “I believe them.”

“More fool you,” she spat at him.

Carol scowled at Raven, but Rogers held up his hand. “I don’t blame her for her anger. A man using my name and my face abused her. That would be hard for anyone to get over.”

“I don’t need your pity, Boy Scout,” Raven growled.

“Mom!” Becky said, the tone of her voice clearly disapproving.

Rogers stood and put his hand on Becky’s shoulder. “And here’s what I meant about people, Carol. I fought with the Invaders in World War II. I battled alongside Atlanteans, and androids, alike. Some of them are…” he stopped and frowned a little, “were, Mutants. But they weren’t my enemy, then or now. While I was in that lab, Raven snuck in and took some… samples, from my unconscious form. Becky here is the result; half Mutant, and half me. Is she my enemy? Certainly not. I may have been upset at what Raven did at the beginning, but I’m learning that I have a beautiful, wonderful, smart, strong, and _Mutant_ daughter. And I couldn’t be happier about it.”

Becky beamed at the praise, and Raven felt a shock of fear, as she realized her own anger was driving her daughter away, and to him. His easygoing attitude was drawing Becky in. The girl was never prone to rages and scheming like Raven was, and it was frustrating to realize that she was making herself look unsympathetic for being, frankly, hateful and untrusting. If she wanted to keep her daughter’s love, she was going to have to moderate that… at least around the girl.

“Sorry Rogers,” she said, in as pleasant a voice as she could manage. Jimaine raised an eyebrow at her, and gave a little half nod, as if to say ‘About time you figured that out’. She stared back frostily until the witch looked away with a small smile. At least Becky looked mollified, and even Rogers smiled at her. Wonderful.

“Your daughter, with _her?_ ” Danvers said, looking sickened.

“Yes. And I will fight to the death to keep her from being victimized by Shield.” There was a dangerous look in his eyes as he said this, and for a brief moment, Raven felt at complete accord with him, at least on this one subject. “But I asked you a question, Carol. Who cheated you? Who’s to blame for what happened to you?” He sat back in the chair, and leaned close to her. “Let me ask this another way. Who was dominant when it happened?”

Danvers looked down at her gloved hands. “I was.”

“But they tricked you. Would you have done it if you’d known that it was yourself you had to kill?”

“Of course not!” she shot back. She snorted angrily. “Okay, I admit it. It was Shield. The _Men_ in Shield. The misogynist fucks that couldn’t stand a female officer. Men who couldn’t stand a woman who was stronger and more powerful than they were. Who saw me as contaminated; when it was because of them that I became that way. And as soon as those powers were passed to someone they could control, who decided I was expendable.”

Jimmy stepped forward. “Agent Danvers,” he said. She glared at him, but he ignored it. “I’m Legacy, and I Speak for the Dead. You do know, that this… persona… is just a shadow, and not a whole soul, don’t you? Carol Danvers is Dead, and if you like I can call her spirit here so you can see for yourself.

“My ghost?” she whispered, an expression of horror coming over her face.

“ _Her_ ghost,” he said. “You… are just an impression. An image of her, if you will.” He raised his eyebrows. “Shall I?”

“…Sure,” she said faintly.

Jimmy passed his hands in the air in complex gestures, and the room became a little hazy, as he established a zone where the Dead could be manifest to those without the Sight. “Carol Danvers, come forth.”

A figure coalesced. “What do you want, Mutant?” It was the woman Raven had seen in Jimaine’s Crystal.

Another form appeared without his bidding, a tall mustached man, with the same outlandish cloak that Jimmy now wore. “My, she’s unpleasant,” he said.

“She’s been taught to hate us, Stephen,” Jimmy said. He turned to his mother, “Mama, this is Stephen Strange, lately the Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme, and my advisor on things magical and spiritual.”

Jimaine gave the spirit a suspicious nod, and Raven smirked at the irony; the witch was also jealous of the influence another had on her own child.

“Lady Szardos,” the ghost bowed to her coolly but politely.

Rogers stood up, and the ghost of Danvers gasped. “You’re him… really him. I can see it… the Dead acknowledge you…”

He nodded. “What happened to you after the Hound took your powers?”

“When I finally woke up, I tried to complain to the General, but he wouldn’t see me,” the ghost said. “I was put in the brig, and pretty soon I was strapped to a chair and killed. They threw my ashes off the garbage bay just like they would with a Hound…”

“I did it… I killed myself,” the Danvers persona inside of Marie said.

The ghost looked at her shrewdly. “A piece of me is still in there, stolen with the Kree powers.”

“But only a piece,” Jimmy said. “She thinks she has a right to this girl’s life, and she doesn’t.” He turned to Rogue, “If you can’t coexist in there, I will have to uproot the foreign persona, and return it to the whole. Is that understood?”

Rogue nodded, her blue gray eyes bleak. “And if I ask you to do that anyway?” she said.

 “Then I will,” he said. “But for now, I’m not sure it’s necessary.” He looked back at the ghost. “That alright with you, as well?” The ghost nodded, and Jimmy sent her back to her afterlife with his thanks. He shared a smile with Stephen as he took down the Dead-zone, and the spirit faded from general view. “As a gesture of good faith, cease tormenting the girl, and let her begin to heal; physically, mentally, and emotionally. Don’t force your way dominant just because you can.”

 “Alright.” Rogue’s eyes closed, and when they opened again they had changed from frosty blue to a haunted green. Eyes that gradually cleared and brightened as recent memories filtered in to the native personality. Rogue looked back and forth at the people in the room, before settling on Becky. “ _Omigawd_ , Becky! Your dad is Captain America?” she squealed, and the room broke up in laughter. Becky came over and carefully hugged her. “Yeah. Dad, this is my sister, Marie.” Rogers politely shook her hand, glove to glove.

Raven watched as an air of tension gradually lifted from her foster daughter. Maybe Marie would be all right after all... 

 

A/N: [*] Brad = Asshole, at least according to the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Generally anyone called Brad in my stories is an asshat.

Information about Carol Danvers / Rogue, as well as the Red Skull, can be found in the same sorts of places I described last time. While I researched this info, it turned out the instability / schizophrenia that Rogue suffered after absorbing the Danvers persona was inherent in Carol, not in Rogue, because Carol was mentally unstable before the absorption in canon.

I had to pick a “real name” for Rogue, because her family (Raven and Becky) would know it, so I picked the Marie identity from the movies, although Marvel hadn't officially established her true name in canon when I wrote this. [In the Role-playing game that inspired these stories, we called Rogue ‘Susan’, because of the Susan B. Anthony coins she threw as missiles as she attacked the S.H.I.E.L.D. Heli-Carrier in a mainline 616 Marvel Story, when she was still the villain she started out as, before she joined the X-Men and was rehabilitated.]


	7. Dion – Dream Lovers

Dion woke in the darkness, hearing a soft snore beside her. She froze, leaning on her empathy, then relaxing when the feeling of loving contentment told her the man beside her was Jimmy. She ran her hand over him softly, finding his strong young form to be a welcome change to the bulky mass of her former master. Fisk was strong, but physically, he repulsed her. That wasn’t so with Jimmy.

She turned on a dim light he’d given her so she could make her way around his quarters in the night. One hand still rested on his bare chest, and in his sleep he brought his warm hand to cover hers. She smiled, wishing that he’d made love to her. She yearned for the feel of his body completing her. Her other experiences… her mind flinched away from the memories of Fisk and his sadistic buddies, and those were only the most recent of her abusers.

Awake now, she pulled away, and his hand shifted, holding her to him. Jimmy’s green eyes blinked open blurrily, searching for her. “It’s alright,” she said quietly, “I need to use the bathroom.” His slight frown eased, and his eyes slipped closed. He let her go and murmured something softly before turning over to find a more comfortable position.

As she used the facilities, she thought about what he’d told her last night; that while he wasn’t ashamed of his heritage of bastardy, he wanted to do right by her and wait until they were married. Very well then, Jimmy Szardos, she thought, then we will be married _soon_. On her way back to the bed she saw the easel, and lifted the cover to see what was there. It was a landscape-oriented canvas that centered on an extreme close-up of her violet eyes.

It was a bit disconcerting. Recently she’d only seen her face in reflection, and never at such scale. The row of journals drew her in and she looked through them as well. It was another advantage that he’d had. She never dared to put anything down, and had to rely on her memory for the things they shared in dreams.

She looked at him sleeping and quietly wept. Surrounded by the evidence of the depths of his need for her, she knew that he’d kept himself chaste, never doubting that he would find her, someday. While she was… the veteran, or the victim, depending on your point of view, of years of meaningless and often brutal sex. There was nothing mysterious about intimacy to her, and she longed to recapture the wonder of it with his innocence. Was that selfish of her? She didn’t know.

And this place frightened her. Despite her bravado when they arrived, survival was only possible here on this cold and airless rock by means and materials that threatened her health, and that she feared would tax her ability to regenerate. Artificial fabrics, petroleum based substances, and cheap base metals caused her flesh to blister and smoke. Even trace amounts of petroleum fumes or pollutants in the air caused her severe allergic reactions. She needed to be around natural things for her health’s sake, and where could she find them in this place?

“I’m here, _schatz,_ ” Jimmy said; unexpectedly close to her, as he pulled her into his arms. She trembled against his bare chest, holding on tightly. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m afraid,” she said. “Of this place. Afraid I can’t love you as you love me.”

“What, because of _them?_ ” he asked. She nodded, unable to look him in the eyes. He harrumphed to himself, and then carried her to the mahogany bed. “Put on your cloak,” he said, while he pulled the thick downy comforter off the mattress. Puzzled, she did as he asked. He pulled the comforter around them both, then Vanished them to someplace completely different. She started as she scented flowers and growing things around them. “This is the Garden,” he said. Gesturing up, he said, “Those shutters are open during the Asteroid’s ‘Day’. We are so high up in orbit we get sunlight most of the time, which plays havoc with the internal clocks of human and plant alike. It’s rather seldom that we fall into either the Earth or Moon’s shadow and see the stars here.

He hit some controls, and soft footlights came on throughout the Garden, illuminating various pathways. The brass-framed glass gazebo sparkled distantly in the center of the great chamber. “Ororo… that’s the black woman with the white hair, comes to this place. She’s a weather witch who needs to be around natural things… sound familiar?” He smiled at her. “Maybe things won’t burn her, but you’ll find your needs can be met here. The magics of my mother and I are also sensitive to technology, so don’t think that you’re all alone. As we find things that need to be changed for you, we’ll deal with them. Alright?”

While he spoke, she drew in eager breaths, enjoying the perfumed air. When he finished she turned to him, “I don’t know if I deserve such efforts. The things I’ve done…”

“Mean nothing!” he snapped. “Kitty, the girl whose face you healed… she’s my sister-in-law. Shield turned her into an assassin, but she realized that it wasn’t her fault, it was theirs.”

“An assassin?” Dion said. “I sensed a tiger lurking inside her. And me they made into a who…” he put his hand firmly over her mouth, his eyebrows drawn down in a thunderous frown.

“Never speak of yourself that way, my treasure,” he commanded. She looked into his emerald eyes, frightened of the anger in them until her heart told her that his anger wasn’t directed at her. He stepped closer, almost flush against her, and looked down, the heat in his gaze changing to another kind of fire entirely. “I see a change of plans is in order,” he whispered. “You need to see… need to feel…” his words trailed off as he took his hand away from her mouth and replaced it with a fierce kiss that she instantly responded to. His arms snaked around her, holding her tight, and she felt as is she were dissolving against him. Suddenly he broke free of the embrace, and she reeled for a second in the loss of him, until he laid her down on the spread comforter, and blessedly followed her down to its softness.

He unfastened her cloak and flung it to the side, and explored her with his hands and mouth, taking in the relatively tame nightgown she wore as if it had come from an exotic boutique. He was everything she’d been hoping for, but she felt compelled to offer a token objection. “You… wanted to wait…” she gasped between his kisses.

“I was wrong,” he said. “You need this. _We_ need this.” Her sense of honor satisfied, she relaxed into his efforts, sensing where his enthusiasm and passion began to falter from his inexperience, and showing him where and how to touch to best please the both of them. She shed the dowdy nightgown as he peeled off his sleep pants, touching him until he trembled with eagerness. “Stop… _bitte_ , I want to be in you…”

She put her finger on his sweet lips, “You’re too keyed up, too new at this. Let me take the edge off, and you’ll have better control.” He nodded jerkily, and hissed when she took him into her mouth. All too quickly, he yielded to her skills. She held him as he panted in the aftermath, soothing him and reassuring him that weren’t done by any means. They caressed each other, and soon he was eager for her again. Again she taught him how and where to touch, and found he was a fast learner. Before long, he had her moaning and aching for him. “Jimmy, please…”

He rose over her, looking down as he placed himself at her entrance. He bit his lip and pushed in slowly, his eyes rolling at the exquisite sensations. Her heart fell so full… his love and passion was radiating so plainly from him. They found a rhythm together and held onto it until both their universes exploded into the purest light…

* * *

A polite cough awakened her. She looked up into the amused blue eyes of the Windrider. She and Jimmy were still cradled in the nest of the comforter, on the grass of the Garden, covered by her cloak in lieu of sheets. The distant skylights were open, exposing the chamber to the sun, which glinted off their onlooker’s silvery hair. “Perhaps you two should return to your quarters,” Ororo said, “before the children arrive for their morning gardening.” Jimmy started awake when she spoke, and colored fetchingly, clearing his throat in embarrassment.

He stretched an arm out for his night pants, but her gown was simply out of reach. A helpful little breeze made it flutter closer, and he grabbed it with a thankful nod. Ororo turned around deliberately, and he pushed the clothing into her arms, and then urged her to stand while he tried to keep them within the folds of the comforter. Laughing, and leaning on each other giddily, he Vanished them back to his quarters. “ _Verdammt…_ I can’t believe we… Oh, we’re never to going to live this down…” he said distractedly, still laughing. Having shared paradise with him, she dropped her coverings and captured his lips for a kiss. He stopped and looked into her eyes, then leaned his forehead against hers after the manner of friendly cats. “Are you feeling better?”

She touched him, hands splayed over his chest, and let her healing power and empathy reach inside of him and show him much better she was. The idea of the Asteroid still made her apprehensive, but with this man beside her, she felt she could face anything. With a touch of regret, she ensured there would be no offspring from last night, until they’d talked about it at least. As much as she desperately wanted his children, and lots of them, now probably wasn’t the best time. “I suppose we _have_ to get married now,” she said mischievously, “though after last night, any ceremony would be redundant.”

“Not to my family, it won’t,” he said, squeezing her bottom. She gave him her laughter as she went to shower, only to find him crowding in with her, and ensuring that they had even more need to clean up.

At the next meal, the Windrider and her mate both smirked at them. She shrugged and went on eating as the teen contingent joined them at their table, subjecting them to even more speculative looks. Mack finally spoke up, “So… is it true you guys ‘christened’ the Garden last night?” Kurt spat out the drink he’d just taken and goggled at the dusky teen while Kitty and Becky giggled.

“Where did you hear that?" Kurt hissed.

Mack tapped his ear. “Mom caught them _in_ _flagrant_ é this morning, all _dishabille_ in the grass, and she told Dad. I heard.”

Jimmy was flushing furiously, trying to pay attention to his luncheon. She sighed. “Yes, it’s true.” He shot her a dark look, and she shrugged again. “I am not going to deny the best night of my life, dearest. Get used to it.”

He sighed and covered one of her hands. “But you don’t have to encourage salacious gossip, my love.”

She laughed, tossing her long black braid. “It’s not gossip if it’s true. And it _is_ salacious. Just the sort of thing that teenagers like to gossip about.”

Kitty gave her a searching look. “You’re a teenager, too, Dion.”

Her smiled faltered a little. “Only in years, Little Tiger, and for much the same reason as you and Kurt.”

Kitty came around the table and hugged her. “I haven’t thanked you enough for this…” she touched her face, “and for giving us hope that someday…” her hand dropped to her middle as she looked at Kurt. Dion almost couldn’t catch her breath, for the fire in Kurt’s eyes was more than matched by the love and passion she felt flow between them through their locked gazes.

Tears flowed down Dion’s face as she touched them both, evaluating, comparing, the genetics of one to the other. She hugged Kitty back, and whispered in her ear, “Your children will be healthy and with a strong chance of Mutant gifts.”

Kitty leaned back and looked her in the eyes. “Gifts?” she said with a bitterness that Dion could understand.

“Gifts,” she repeated firmly. “The fact that men fear them doesn’t make them any less God-given.” She turned to Kurt, “Come here, brother.” His scarring was different from the tattoos, but she was able to smooth them away, for the most part. When she lowered her trembling hand, the golden glow flickering out, Kitty caressed her husband’s face tenderly. “I’ll finish later, but for now we both need to stock up our energy.” She dug into her food again, and watched as Kurt did the same. “When I can, I make used of the energies of the recipient as well as my own.”

“What if they’re too weak for that?” Mack asked her.

“Then I bear the energy burden for both of us,” she said. “It can be heavy.”

Mack looked thoughtful as he kept eating, suddenly serious. Becky looked over at him. “Thinking about Ilyana, Mack?”

“When doesn’t he?” Warren said. “Ow.” The redhead rubbed his arm from where Mack had casually punched him.

Mack, as if nothing had happened, nodded. “I don’t know if Dion can help what Jimmy and his mom said was at its root is a magic problem, but maybe she can slow down the effects.”

Jimmy looked up, putting aside his embarrassment. “It’s possible. We’ve sensed the bulk of the malice is targeted at her mind and magic, but there’s a gradual physical weakening that’s also in play.”

“Of course,” Dion said. “I’m willing to help anyone who needs it.”

Jon Magnusson’s voice came from behind her, “That’s good to hear, Dion. Can you and Jimmy come to my office today? We need to have a talk.”

She nodded, and Jimmy flushed red again. “Oh… I… I mean, we…” he babbled then lowered his head. “Yes sir,” he said in a small voice. Most of the teens couldn’t help but to snicker. She could feel it as Jon took a firm hold of the amusement that tried to rise up in him, as well.

“Relax, son,” Jon said. “You two aren’t in any trouble, we’re just looking for some background information, if that’s alright with you, Dion,” the older man’s green eyes, so like his son’s looked at her.

She lowered her head, “If you need to hear it, sir, but I’d just as soon not think about my past.”

“It’s probably not that easy to ignore your past, girl,” Jon said. “Our histories have a way of catching up with us…”

With a quirk of his lips he put his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder, who shrugged it off and started to stand. “If she doesn’t want to talk about it…” Jimmy said.

She pulled his sleeve so he’d sit back down beside her. “It’s okay, Jimmy. He’s probably right anyway.” Jon nodded to her and to the table in general, and went back to the head table with the Raiders.

* * *

By the time they arrived at Magnusson’s office, Jimmy was keyed up, but Dion was resigned to the revelation of her history, ugly as it was. After helping her to be seated, Jimmy dropped angrily into a chair next to hers. “I don’t think you should make her do this.”

“He isn’t,” Dion said. “And your parents have every right to know about me.”

Jon turned on a recorder, and leaned back, taking Jimaine’s hands with his where she sat beside him. “Whenever you’re ready.”

She sighed, and started at the beginning. “My mom’s name was Helen Stevens, a white trash bar waitress from a little town in Connecticut. I came about from a one-night stand, and with the laws against abortion and the crackdowns on illegal providers she didn’t dare try to get rid of me. I certainly made her life harder. Shield men are usually restrained from harassing women to avoid angering the local communities, but I was the proof she was a ‘slut’. They would use her as if she was a prostitute, and if they felt like it, they’d leave money, or booze, or maybe a toy for me. No one would marry her with me around, or so she thought. When I was seven, one of her more frequent Shield ‘visitors’ married her… but only to get access to me.”

She ignored the gasps, and continued, some of the veneer of culture fading from her increasingly New England accent. “Even though he’d been one of the ones using her, she agreed to marry him, thinking she could finally improve her lifestyle. Even Shield doesn’t condone child-rape, but they usually don’t look too hard at what happens within ‘family units’. Mom ignored me when I said I didn’t like to ‘wrestle’ with her husband. My teachers knew he was Shield, and told me if I kept complaining they’d have to tell him about it. No one would help me, and after a year of him molesting me, I ran away.”

She drew in a long breath. “I hacked off my hair with a knife and lived on the streets as a boy. It was tough to get by, but there are a lot of people living on the streets in New England. When I got to New York when I was nine, I joined a gang. We did okay taking care of each other, until puberty threatened. Even as a ‘boy’, I was pretty, and one of the older kids wanted me. As bad as boys had it on the streets, the girls had it so much worse. I couldn’t let him find out who I really was, so I ran away again.” She stared the wall, and made herself keep talking, her manner of speaking becoming harsher.

“When my menses started, and my curves began to grow, my life got harder. I was bigger, and tried to get by on my own, but I was eventually found out. The boys who knew about me wouldn’t turn me in if I’d agree to service them. It wasn’t like I was a virgin, so I did what I had to. The night I got caught… was bad. One of my regulars had taken an awful drug, and he was so rough with me I couldn’t bring him down.” Dion winced, and rubbed her arm. “He said all I was good for was cock, and he said he was going to make sure everyone knew it. He took a knife… and started to carve… a phallus on my arm. He’d finished with the balls and was beginning the shaft, when I started screaming. A Shield patrol found us and took us both in.”

She pushed up her sleeve and showed what looked like a lemniscate on her upper arm. “I modified the scar to something I could accept, but I was in so much shock that I told them my real name. They realized I hadn’t been tested for several years, and a blood test showed I had the active gene, so I was sent to a camp. My mom, it appeared, died of an ‘accident’ around the time I left home. My stepfather disowned me; I was too old for him anyway.”

“Why did you…” Jimmy’s voice choked, tears pouring down his face, “Why did you keep that horrible scar?”

“I couldn’t heal it, love. It was bad enough that they knew I quickly recovered from things like bruises, but for them to know I could heal deep cuts? They’re very serious about the sterilizations. If they didn’t think they could keep me sterile, their only other option was a hysterectomy, or even death. A little scar was the least of my worries… But I did change the meaning from what he intended, which was servitude to men, into something meaning infinity. The lemniscate gave me some hope, that my possibilities were limitless. For me, it meant the hope that someday you would come to free me.”

He gathered her into his arms and hugged her fiercely to him, his sympathy and anger crashing through her. Gradually she helped him calm, releasing natural chemicals in his system. “It’s okay, Jimmy, I’ve been living with this all my life.”

“It’s not alright,” he growled.

She sighed, “Perhaps not, but getting angry won’t help.” She straightened his chestnut hair, and snuggled down from his lap to sit beside him again. “After I healed from the procedure I was put up for auction. I was so beautiful; they didn’t care what my power was. If I were dangerous, they’d just give me a pretty inhibition collar. Mayor Fisk bought my contract and decided I was to be his hostess and bed warmer, as I’ve been for the last couple of years. I’m sixteen now. He had me tutored so I wouldn’t seem ignorant at his parties, and I never let on how much I already knew from teaching myself. I have no idea how many gaps there might be in my education, but I like to learn, and would be eager to fill them in.”

She looked up at Jon who was wiping his eyes, while Jimaine beside him still cried quietly. “Is that all?” Jon said. She nodded.

Jimmy traced the scar on her arm with a finger. “Are you keeping it?”

“I was planning on it,” she said. “The future is still before us, love.”

He nodded. “How soon can we get married, Poppa?”

Jon chucked a little. “As soon as possible, I’d say. A few days at most.” Jimaine nodded her agreement and came around the big desk to embrace them.

“You are still welcome here, Dion,” she said. “Never forget that.”

“Even after all of that?” Dion said, knowing that her insecurities were showing.

“It doesn’t matter what was done to you, child.” The gypsy woman said. “It only matters who you are, and how happy you are together.”

Dion hugged her back, crying freely herself at such acceptance. Truly and finally, she was home.

* * *

Kitty gladly donated the dress she wore to her dedication ceremony, and helped to alter it for Dion’s taller frame and riper curves. Jimmy still had a formal suit for the same occasion; with the addition of the embroidered Romany vest that Kurt wore that night, he was set.

“Just promise tonight won’t end the same way, brother,” Jimmy said to Kurt as they stood waiting for the bride to be in the Garden.

“Keep a civil tongue in your head, or I can’t guarantee it,” Kurt said.

Jimmy raised a hand in promise. “Agreed. She made me promise, or I’ll have a cold honeymoon,” he joked. He was looking at his brother’s face when the music started, and watched Kurt’s eyes widen in awe and amazement. Slowly he turned to see her on Logan’s arm as they made their way up to him. Her long dark locks were mostly loose, contrasting with the brightness of the gown, and trailed in soft dark waves to the back of her legs. His mouth was dry as a desert as Logan passed her hand to his, the older man unsuccessfully hiding a smirk at the shell shocked look on groom’s face.

* * *

He looks so handsome, Dion thought, as her hand was placed in Jimmy’s. He was shaking with the emotion of the moment, and she felt her own smile was near to splitting her face in two. With tremendous effort, she and her soul-mate pulled their attention from each other to Jon, who was reciting the old words to them, from the pages of a little white book that came to mean so much to Kurt and Kitty.

In addition to the responses that the little book called for, they had their own vows to make. Jimmy turned to her. “I have known you all my life, it seems, and yet I don’t know you at all. What I do know tells me I will spend the rest of my life learning how to please you, and give you the happiness that you have always deserved and never had. You are my Angel, my Princess, and my Goddess, and if none of the other men you have known in your life have seen this, then I curse them for fools, for you are all of that and infinitely more. I give to you my hand, my heart, my life and my very soul. All of them were yours from the moment you said you’d come away with me. I don’t know what I have done to deserve you, oh most precious of gifts, but I am, and always will be, humbly grateful.”

There were tears on her cheeks as she struggled to keep from choking up. “Jimmy, quite literally you are the man of my dreams. In you I found safe harbor and refuge from the nightmare that was my life. Every night I found solace in your compassion, without ever a word or touch because you were always there, and you cared.” She smiled tremulously, “You know, I think I developed empathy so I could feel even closer to you. Your efforts to brighten my nights and maybe bring me a smile meant more to me than I will ever be able to express. You helped me see the possibilities outside my circumstances, and that made all the difference. You are my Knight in darkling armor, and all that I am or have is yours.”

They turned back to Jon. “I pronounce you husband and wife. James Charles Szardos, you may kiss your bride.”

Her husband, now that was a fine thought, enwrapped her in his arms and kissed her deeply and lingeringly. There were catcalls and hooting from the audience by the time the kissed ended and he helped her find her balance, with Kurt poking him the side with his tail, muttering, “Get a room.”

“Soon as we can, brother. Soon as we can,” Jimmy muttered back.

The final processional music sounded, and they walked arm and arm back through the throng of family, friends and well-wishers. Her head was still spinning from the kiss, and the moment, and all of the pulsing emotions surrounding them. She found herself facing away from a half circle of girls and women throwing her bouquet. She turned around at the gasp to see Raven holding it, cheeks purpling as Dion could feel waves of shock, annoyance, and… envy? as they rolled through the older woman. With all eyes on her, and Becky squealing with glee, Raven glared daggers all around and stalked up to Jimaine and thrust the flowers at her. “There’s been some mistake. These should be yours.”

Jimaine brought the blossoms up to her nose and pointedly eyed Jon. “Perhaps you’re right, Raven. Thank you.”

The ‘Who, me?’ look on Jon’s face right then got everyone laughing.

After the photographs and the cake, there was dancing. Jimmy had the first dance with her, and as it turned out, the last one as well. As the night progressed she taken turns with most of the prominent men who were present, but she kept coming back to her husband. Finally, Kurt called for attention by the gazebo, as the lights dimmed drastically. "This is from Kätzchen and I. Enjoy.”

Logan and Jon carried out a common wire spool, dotted with lit candles, and Kitty followed carrying a record player. When the spool was settled, she put the player down and put the needle in the groove, then faded into the shadows with her husband.

The soft strains of Bolero started, and Dion and Jimmy began to dance. She’d heard the piece before, when Fisk took her to the Metropolitan, but never had its power been so clear to her before. The mystery was that it’s stately pace never increased, and its essential melody never altered throughout many repetitions, and yet the tension of the musing continuously built for the listener. It began almost inaudibly soft, passing from instrument to instrument, gradually becoming louder, as harmonies layered on until the entire orchestra was playing thunderous crescendo.

Just as the music began almost hesitantly, becoming bolder as it progressed; so did their dancing. Jimmy held her closely to him, looking deeply into her eyes as they moved within the quiet circle of candlelight, with the only sound above the beating of their hearts being the music. At first, feeling self-conscious, she reached out to him and linked them empathically. Bright green eyes widened at the contact, followed quickly by his soft supportive smile. As the music built, simple dance steps became more elaborate. His Gypsy flair revealed itself in his footwork, and Dion, feeding off the untamed joy of his nature let go the restraints she held on her raw, innate sensuality. She shook out the light plait that kept the dark masses of her hair in check and let it swirl and play about her calves.

She emitted a golden glow from within, that included him in its light. Forgetting about everyone else but her soul-mate; she reveled in the flush of her cheeks and her bold movements as she seduced him in dance. Pressing up against him, moving with him, she used her hands to stroke his face and pull him down to a deep impassioned kiss. His hands drifted up and down her sides; now brushing the sides of her breasts, then caressing her rear as he pulled her even closer.

Her head was flung back in abandon, hair trailing the ground, when the crashing finale ended the song. Only the record’s crackle and hiss could be heard as he pulled her upright and kissed her again. From the depths of the kiss, she felt his enchanted cloak fold about them, and then they were suddenly back in their quarters. As Jimmy began to undress her, her head cleared enough for her to ask, “Our wedding guests…?”

“…all probably have better things to do right now. I know that I do.” His mouth latched onto the side of her neck, and moved down to flesh his efforts were baring, she realized that he was undoubtedly correct.


	8. Steve – Project: Awaken

“…Ninety-five.” In the darkened gym aboard the asteroid, Steve’s dog tag clacked on the floor at the low point of every pushup, as it dangled from the chain around his neck. “Ninety-six.”

Sometimes it landed with the hollows of the punched characters facing upwards, and at other times he looked at the rounded backs of them. “Ninety-seven.”

When the letters were up, sometimes the tag was upside-down, and at others it was right side up and readable. “Ninety-eight.” Still, he knew what it said by heart, line by line.

 _‘Rogers, Steven. 10591776. T43 44. O. P.’_ Name; last name first. Serial number; starting with a 1 for Regular Army, to show he’d enlisted instead of being drafted. There was no other number like it, beginning with 105, a group unto himself, and ending with 1776 as some wag’s idea of a joke. Dates of his last Tetanus shots. Blood type O, the positive being assumed. P for Protestant.

“Ninety-nine.” They changed the format for the info a lot over the years of the war. His first tags had his name punched normally, with his next of kin and home address on it. He tended to go through dog tags a lot, though, and the ones he came through the ice with were of a later style.

“One hundred.” He pushed himself to a sitting position, draping a towel around his neck and turning the tag over in his hand. He only had one now. He’d given the other to Becky. It seemed in the years after the war, they’d become fashionable for youngsters to wear, especially genuine ones like his. He missed the weight of the second tag, but the happy look on her face when he hung it around her neck more than made up for that. She’d asked about the little notch on one side, but he’d only shrugged. He didn’t want to tell her what he’d heard on the battlefield… that when a man died and couldn’t be removed right away, one of the tags was taken for record keeping, and the other… the notch was put between the dead man's teeth and his jaw kicked shut to ensure the tag embedded itself in the skull of the deceased, so the body could be properly identified later.[*]

Still turning the tag in his hands, his mind drifted back to his experiences of the war. The smells of mud, gun smoke, and decay. The steady thud of the motors and the popping of gunfire. Straining his hearing for the stealthy sound of the enemy… He froze at a quiet footfall, followed by soft words spoken in German. In an instant, the war was back with him in the here and now. He felt naked, and out of uniform without his shield and sidearm. But even as he pressed back into the dark corner of the gym, skin prickling with a fine layer of apprehensive sweat, he recognized the voice of the speaker. No Nazi he’d ever heard spoke as gently and lyrically as Kurt Wagner. Steve edged forward, just enough to hear why Kurt was here, in the dark.

“We are here as you asked, Mother,” the young mutant said. “Not that we understand the secrecy you insisted on.”

“Thank you, Kurt,” Darkholme said. “Let’s just say a little birdy told me there will be a mission briefing tomorrow. Shield’s _Herr_ Leader,” the distain in her voice was clearly audible, “is giving a major speech. That’s unusual these days, as he prefers to stay behind the scenes, but with the uproar about the fall of the Carrier and the raid on Mayor Fisk’s mansion, the government brought out the big guns.” Someone hissed during her words, but he couldn’t tell who. Darkholme continued, “I’m telling you, because of everyone here, the two of you have as much desire to see him dead as I do. More, you have the skills and training to help me see this through. And unlike many of the others, you two aren’t hampered by the do-goodism that might allow him to get away.”

Kurt, and Steve presumed, Kitty were quiet after Darkholme finished speaking, and then; “I was not trained as a killer, Mother, and I prefer that Kätzchen not revisit those skills, either.”

“Wait, Kurt,” yes, that was Kitty Wagner’s voice. “We got a chance to face down our demons on the Carrier. It’s only fair she get to do so, as well. So. We can go as support, and to keep the guards and such off you. But if you want him dead, that’s your own lookout. Clear?”

“Wouldn’t want it any other way, dear. So you two are with me on this?”

There was a sigh, and Kurt responded. “Very well, Mother. We’re with you.”

The conspirators parted ways then, with Kurt and Kitty passing by where Steve stood shrouded by the darkness. Golden eyes met his as the young acrobat went by, and Steve could swear that Kurt smiled at him, but he couldn’t say why.

The shadows of the gym grew quiet again, and Steve thought about what he’d just heard. So Darkholme wanted to confront the Skull and kill the filthy Nazi if she was able. Well… he had no problems with taking the old man out, as the woman pointed out to him many times, he’d traded one war for another in this new time. But… he let out a _huff_ of exasperation… Damn it! If anyone had a demon to face down, it was him! Perhaps identity theft on the grandest of scales didn’t compare to over a year of rape and sexual abuse, as she had endured, but he still wanted to stare the old Nazi in the eye one last time. Darkholme was just going to have to accept that there’d be one more person on the upcoming mission list.

Now if he could only get her out of his head at nights. Dreaming erotically of a woman he could barely stand was annoying, to say the least…

* * *

Damn her sapphire skin and ruby hair! She was like a jewel made flesh. A regular Mata Hari; she was a danger to every male in the room. She’d taken to pacing the room during Raider’s meetings, and even her own son would watch her in horrified fascination. Like a Queen cat in heat, she would slink around the room, and Rebecca would only smile, because her Mom was getting back to normal, for her… Steve crossed his arms and stuck his long legs out away from the table, scowling.

Normal! Hell, if that was normal for Darkholme, then all he could say that the sooner she got married off, the better. His scowl deepened. Um… to someone else, that is. But then, she wasn’t the marrying kind, was she, despite having caught the bouquet at Szardos’s wedding. She wasn’t exactly normal by any definition, except her own. Unbidden, his mind called up an image from a dream… Of her lying wanton under him, as he sweated to give her more of what she’d stolen from him to make their daughter…

The she devil’s eyes locked with his, with half a sneer of challenge, and half an ‘I caught you looking’ taunting expression, and Steve made himself pay attention to the meeting again, swinging his legs, and more importantly, his lap, back under the table. Yeah, look at the Raider’s leader, with his common-law wife at his side, whose two grown sons had both married before they had…[**] Not that it was any of his business. And why was he thinking about marriage so much these days? His wandering gaze was caught by sky blue fingers toy with hair the color of goldenrods. Yes, he thought with a mental sigh, she was the reason. A modern girl in this modern time, but with his blood in her veins… his, and _hers_. His jaw clenched convulsively. It outraged his every moral instinct that Raven Darkholme was his little girl’s feminine role model. God forbid Becky should turn out to be the kind of fire-breathing ball-breaker her mother was…

He snapped back at attention again at the sound of a name that haunted his sleep even more than Darkholme did; the Red Skull.

“Yeah, I thought that would get your attention, Steve,” Jon said with a smile. “We’ve gotten some intel that the old fossil is giving a televised speech in the wake of our activities lately to announce new security measures. It seems the public has become agitated by our recent successes, and he has to address those concerns.” His smile grew mischievous. “Our contacts in the Resistance told us what station he’ll be broadcasting the live address from, and that they felt too much security would tip off the wrong elements… like us, so the station itself will likely be only lightly guarded. If that’s so, then a select group could go there, and do… what?”

Scott’s face was like stone. “There is this little matter of a Shield ambush a few years ago. We could pay them back for the damage they did to us.” He turned his head so his remaining eye could meet the gazes of the others in the room, one by one. He didn’t have the craggy scar marring his features and bisecting his eyebrow anymore; that was a simple matter for Dion to heal. But the burned out eye… she had to have something to work with; she couldn’t regenerate what was no longer there.

“Sounds good to me, Scooter,” Logan said with a snarling grin. “That’d’a put the fear a’ mutants into ‘em.”

Uncomfortable expressions were all that answered him. Finally Kurt broke the silence, “I would say, _Herr_ Logan, that they already fear us _too much_.” He gestured to himself with a bitter quirk of the mouth, “Mutants like me, for instance. But from what I understand of our ultimate mission here, it is to strive for the day when we are accepted as citizens, and to fight only the powers that would harm us or keep us from that goal.”

Bless you, Kurt, Steve thought. The young German had brought up just the right point. “Tell me,” he said to Scott, “What did that ambush you were in create?”

“Excuse me?” Scott adjusted his red glasses, one lens bright, and one dark.

“By Killing Magneto,” Steve said, “they created a martyr; a larger than life symbol that our leader Jon, here is exploiting to this day. The myth of Magneto still exists, inspiring mutants, and reminding humans that you won’t just go away and give up.” Now it was his turn to look up and down the table. “Kill the Skull and you make him their martyr; a beloved old man, slaughtered by those ‘evil, nasty mutants’. Even if no one sees who killed him, that’s what they’ll say.” As well as ensuring that he could never claim his own name again.

“You got a better idea, Boy Scout?” Darkholme snarled at him, furious.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” he told her. “A ‘little birdy’ tipped me about this, too, and I had some time to think it through, if you all want to hear it.”

Jon gave a permissive wave, “By all means.”

“He’ll be in a television studio, his image and voice broadcasting all over the country, and the world. If we can get him to tell the truth, on camera… we can have someone who can man the cameras, and not be seen,” Steve gestured at Kurt, “after making sure the warning lights that signal broadcasting are covered, and preventing Shield from stopping the signal, wouldn’t that be more effective that just killing him? Not that his death is a bad idea, but the first goal should be to get at the truth of who he really is.”

“He needs to _die_ ,” Darkholme said through gritted teeth.

“If that’s what we all agree on,” Steve said. “This is a war. But after he’s revealed the truth, and shaken the underpinnings that Shield and this sick society were founded on. If it can be convincing enough, eventually everyone who sees it will have to deal with the information that the world’s leader was a Nazi, and some of them will side with us.”

“He has a good point, Raven” Kitty said.

“Fine,” she snapped, then took a breath as she fought for her composure. “I’m the one who’s had the most recent…contact… with him, of all of us, and I know the subjects that will get him talking about those things. I should go, along with Kurt, and Kitty.”

“You’ll need support to keep outlying security out of the studio,” Jon said, “but that sounds good for the inside team. You’re to get him talking about who he really is, on camera.”

Steve shook his head, and Darkholme glared at him. “I’m sorry ma’am, but having you bring up secret pillow talk in a broadcast studio, even if the cameras are supposedly turned off… Don’t you think that make him suspicious? Forgive me, but he probably didn’t have any respect for you, so why on Earth would he let you dictate the turn of the conversation, even at gunpoint? Would a conversation like that seem convincing to the public? No, you need someone there who will make him babble everything we want him to say, all on his own. You need me there. Seeing me, especially the way I’ve cheated time, will drive him into a frenzy, and play right into our hands.”

Darkholme slapped her hand down hard on the table, but a quick look around the room showed that Steve’s logic was too convincing to deny. Always one to pick her battles, she grit her teeth and slumped back in her chair, forced to accept the consensus. “All right, Boy Scout, you… have a point.”

“Thank you,” he said. “So where and when is this opportunity…?”

* * *

On the shuttle trip to D.C., Steve listened to Kitty tell her husband how she and Darkholme had been taking Piloting lessons from Wolverine, but his mother had gotten her certificate first. “I could run the vessel in an emergency, but I’d have to rely heavily on the autopilot. Luckily the autopilot is a very smart program.”

“Well done,” Kurt said. “How long before you get your certificate?”

She snorted, “It’s just a matter of time, what little free time I have, after everything else I have to do.” She leaned against her man, and looked at Steve. “Why don’t you get mad when she calls you 'Boy Scout'?”

Steve smiled at her, trying not to think how young she looked without the Hound tattoos on her face. “Well she may be trying to get my goat, but I _was_ a Boy Scout. I don’t think that I would ever have made Eagle Scout.” He thumbed his chest. “I wasn’t always the physical specimen that I am now, before I took the super-soldier formula.” There was a noise that might have been a snort of derision from the cockpit where Darkholme was piloting the shuttle. “I was scrawny, even sickly as a boy. I volunteered for the war, but the board categorized me as 4F; unfit to serve. Then I got the chance to join this experimental program, hoping to be of some use to the war effort. Little did I know what it all would lead to.” He gestured at himself again, this time indicating his original costume that he was wearing, the better to make his identity clear today.

“…A fat head, for one thing…” Darkholme muttered snidely from the front.

He grinned merrily at the kids, pleased to be able to annoy her for a change. “What was that, Darkholme?”

“Nothing!” she snapped, then after a long pause with her voice in a more normal tone, “E.T.A. five minutes.”

“Roger Wilco,” he said. He gripped the strap of his shield reflexively, and watched as the former hounds made their preparations. Kitty perched her night vision goggles on her head, and patted down her shoulders, sides, and legs for her complement of weapons. Kurt hung his gauntlets on either side of his belt to stop them from clanking together. Mostly the acrobat was organizing his kit bag of goodies; tape, spray paint, lock picks, bandages, cord, and the like. Their young faces were so serious, so grim. Too like so many other young soldiers he’d fought with over the years, many of whom he saw die on the battlefield.

Kurt reached out his hand to his wife and gently clasped her hands, leaving her a bit of string, before letting go and putting on his own ring of twine. He brought up a bigger wad of knotted cord that he ran through his thick fingers in the manner of a rosary. Kitty pulled out an antique Star of David from around her neck that she kissed then dropped back inside her dark leather suit. Such an odd couple they were; Catholic and Jewish, American and & German, normal looking and, well, frankly strange looking. But both very human, and for all of it, united by their pain and their love. If only he had found someone like that to see him through… but she’d be dead or very old now, wouldn’t she?

“We’ve landed,” Darkholme said. “Let’s go.” They stepped out onto the roof of a modest sized building in the Washington D.C. commercial district.

Kurt slunk to the rooftop stairwell and handily picked the lock. Steve used his own night goggles to look off the sides of the building for patrols, but found the streets eerily deserted. Other shuttles landed on nearby buildings, their job to keep Shield from interfering with the primary mission. He rejoined them at the stairs, and they followed Kurt down. They waited in the stairwell while he checked for personnel. The top two floors where clear of people, but on the next couple he gestured at Kitty to use her new toys on the civilians he found; darts that contained a sleep drug that delivered on a solid hit. They were weighted and balanced the same as her slim straight shurikens, and Kitty would dart whoever they encountered, then the rest of the team would truss them up and lock them in a closet. It almost seemed the former Hounds were having fun, as they used their deadly skills for such bloodless ends.

From the fifth floor on down, they started encountering Shield Secret Services, and now the kids became serious. When the floor was cleared, they moved on and found a diagram on an agent on the fourth. The President was in the main studio on the third floor, which was the most heavily guarded. “Let’s clear that floor last,” Steve whispered, and the nods of the others indicated their agreement. He had to admit, when Darkholme was on the job she was professional, and hell on wheels. Taking the stairwell to the bottom floor, they cleared it slowly, glad of the fact only necessary studio personnel were there, and minimal guards. While on the second floor, they heard the start of the speech over the building’s loud speakers.

“My fellow citizens,” the hated voice began, “I address you tonight in the face of a grave and present danger. The Mutant terrorists have become increasingly bold in their attacks against the human race and our way of life. In return, I fear that we will have to be equally aggressive in our fight to eradicate them. To this end, I have proposed a number of measures to be ratified by the legislature, that include reevaluating the use of service Mutants, and stepping up our efforts to identify Mutants from an earlier age before they become dangerous.”

“I’ll show you dangerous, you filthy old man,” he heard Darkholme snarled.

The hated voice continued its address. “These measures may include some minor inconveniences to your daily life, but you must understand that it us for the greater cause, and for the safety of our precious children.”

“Just give me what remains of your liberty, and I’ll protect you,” Steve said. She met his eyes and nodded, for once in complete concurrence with him. He turned his head to see Kurt give Kitty a smirk. Now what was that about? Whatever, it was time to move on to the third floor. Before long the outlying guards were tied up, but the rest of the floor was nearly deserted. There were two men in the control booth, two guards behind the cameras on the sound stage, a cameraman, and a political advisor.

Kitty walked through the door of the booth and darted the men in there, and passed them back to the others. “I’ve got this,” she said, “Kurt, try to keep the cameras on the action, one full front and one semi-profile.”

He gave her a thumbs-up, then touched his fingers to his lips and extended them silently to her before he followed Steve and Darkholme to the stage. The back stage door was open, so Kurt crept in and began turning the lights down, and covering the “on air” sign. That got the attention of the guards, who went back to investigate. The faint noises of them being subdued caused the advisor to brave the dimness, and join them in unconsciousness. Darkholme took the advisor’s form and went up the cameraman. “You there, come over here a moment,” the ‘advisor’ said in a stage whisper. The man locked his camera in place, and went back to see what ‘he’ wanted, only to get darted for his trouble.

The silver haired man behind the anchor desk kept reading his speech unsuspecting as vague figures moved behind the dazzling stage lights. Kurt put dark tape on the indicator of the side camera, and waited to do the same to the main, until Steve and Darkholme were in place just outside the lights. Darkholme nodded at Kurt, and walked forward. They heard Kitty say, “Show-time!” over their communicators. Kurt darkened the main camera’s indicator, as the Skull paused in his speech and stared at the blatant approach of his former concubine.

“Hello, Mr. President,” she said. “Bet you didn’t expect to see me again.” The Skull stole a quick glance at the cameras, but looked relieved when they both appeared to be turned off. Nightcrawler showed himself briefly near them before blending back into the darkness. “Oh, we don’t intend on letting you finish your speech. And don’t try calling for your guards, the only people upright in the building are you, and us.”

The gray-haired man sneered at her. “As soon as you interrupted the broadcast, you alerted my Shield troops,” he said curtly. “You will never escape.”

“Who says we want to?” she said. “But it would be worth it to get you.”

He arched an eyebrow and chuckled. “Is that what this is about, Raven? Kill me, and you turn me into a Saint. Normals will never stop hunting your degenerate kind, like you and your demon-spawn of a son over there. It’s too late, anyway, the Final Solution is at hand!”

Steve watched Kurt turn the side camera to capture Darkholme’s look of confusion. The Skull pounded his fist on the table, and stood, causing Kurt to adjust the main camera. “For too long we have tolerated your filth! In our kindness we put Mutants to work as laborers, Hounds, and concubines, but no more! Our kindness has been ill repaid as you destroyed valuable installations, and steal things that you are incapable of understanding. No more, I say. Soon, when these measures pass, the only destination for an apprehended Mutant will be a dissection table. Even beautiful ones like you,” he ended his rant with a salacious smirk.

“You should know, you monster,” Darkholme spat. “Since I spent much of the last few years chained to your bed so you could rape me, when you could manage, that is.”

“Mutant slut,” he sneered in the face of her distain. “I managed enough.”

Enough was enough, Steve thought. “Darkholme!” he whispered to her, and she turned her head a little, showing she’d heard him.

“One of the things we’ve stolen,” she said with an unpleasant smile, “was a certain block of ice from a Shield lab… Do you intend on going to your grave with another man’s name and face? Who are you really, anyway?”

The Skull made a scoffing noise, and glared at her. “The… thing you found was an imposter, and rightly found his end in the sea. It was kept secret so as not to confuse the Public.” He drew himself up, “As you well know, my name is…”

“Don’t you even say it, you old fraud!” Steve said, striding into the lights. He glared sternly at the older man behind the desk. “Remember me? It seems my time ‘on ice’ didn’t harm me, besides what your scientists did, but it did enable me to bypass the aging that is so clearly weighing down on you.” He pushed back his winged cowl, as the Skull gaped at him, because really, what did his secret matter anymore? “My name is Steve Rogers, and you, are the Nazi criminal once called the Red Skull, who has spent the last fifty years using my name and face, to turn this good nation into a hell on earth. Hitler is undoubtedly proud of what you’ve done, in whatever hell he’s rotting in now. You, Johan Schmidt, were his greatest handiwork, but you have surpassed even the master in your evil.”

“Don’t call me that!” The Skull said. “I am Rogers! You are an imposter conjured up from the sea. You should have been destroyed as soon as you were discovered, like the simple fishermen who made the mistake of pulling you from the waves.”

Steve shook his head, sadly. “I expect you to lie to the dupes you’ve ruled over all this time, Schmidt, but are you going to lie to yourself? I thought you were proud of your Aryan heritage, and of your status as the Fuhrer’s favorite lieutenant; the fearsome Red Skull!” He looked the older man up and down scathingly, “I didn’t know that you’d be so ashamed of it all that you’d cling to my identity like child to his security blanket.”

The old man sneered. “ _Nein!_ I am not ashamed! I am a loyal son of the fatherland!” He voice showed the faint traces of an accent long suppressed. “ _Herr_ Hitler made me his brutal fist, and it has been my great pleasure to do the same to your unwitting countrymen.” The toothy bared grin he gave was like nothing the average viewer had ever seen before on their leader’s face. “You Americans were so self righteous during the war, sure that your country could never succumb to the sway of Nationalism, but you were wrong. Little by little I led them to Nazism, and they never even realized it. It’s too late, Rogers… Thirty years ago, even twenty, your presence might have made a difference… but I own them now. Your plans will fail.”

“Not while I breathe, monster,” Steve said. “Not while any trace of the way American used to be exists. I will devote all my years to undoing your work. After all, you don’t have much time left, do you old man? I’m still a young man, with decades ahead of me.”

“What makes you think I’ll permit you to live that long?” the Skull said.

Steve gave him a skeptical look, “The days when you were even close to being a match for me in a fight are long gone, Schmidt.”

The Skull narrowed his eyes, “I have other weapons at my disposal than my fists, Rogers.”

“If you don’t mind my butting into your slogan fest, gentlemen,” Darkholme said. “I want to know, why Mutants?”

“Why not?” the old man said, with a negligent shrug. “Nationalism requires an enemy, an _Other_ to be hated and vilified. Back in Germany, it was the Jews, mostly. Early on when I came here, it was the mongrel bloods you’d allowed into your midst; the Negroes, the Asians, the Hispanics. It was easy to stir up the latent hatred for them as the opening gambit to turn America rightwards politically. But when the Mutants started appearing, well they were the perfect goats for my plans. With racial tensions already high, the evidence that a racial inferior could become a genetic superior caused even those resistant to suppressing the lesser races to get behind the programs to control Mutants. Mutants bring it on themselves with their freakish abilities and appearances.

“Nonsense,” Steve said. “Most of the mutants I’ve met, including Miss Darkholme here, are perfectly ordinary people. Yes, people. Humans like you and me, albeit with extra powers. You perhaps remember the Mutant members of the Invaders that I fought beside during the War? They’re all just people, same as any of us.”

The Skull laughed. “People? Your common citizen wants to think that he’s special, superior even, to everyone else. He wants an excuse to hate, to feel better than the common cattle around him, when the plain truth is he’s part of the self-same herd he’s so busy hating.” A sly smile crossed his face. “And think now, Rogers; do you believe they didn’t know what was really going on? They welcomed a firm hand, and a father figure to tell them what to do, like the children they are. Your face and the hero worship that went with it was just the excuse they needed to admit it to themselves.”

“Americans are not children,” Steve retorted. “We are the self-reliant inheritors of immigrants from all over the world. This nation was founded on the principles of Justice and Liberty.”

“Justice is when the ‘right’ people win, regardless of their actual guilt,” the Skull said. “And Liberty is people yielding their so called freedoms to those who know better than they. They would gladly give up those empty phrases for solid protection from the Enemy.”

“The only Enemy here, is you,” Steve said.

“And what about that blue whore next to you,” the Skull said.

“An ally,” Steve said. “A person, deserving of all the respect due to any person.” He didn’t turn to see how she might respond to those words.

“No! She’s a danger, and a contamination of everything you are and represent. You are the perfect normal human, and humanity will not be safe until her kind is exterminated,” the Skull said.

Steve snorted. “Funny, I seem to remember you saying such things about the Jews, all those years ago.” He half turned from the Skull in disgust, forgetting that old lions still had fangs…

“Gun!” Darkholme said.

He swung back to face the desk, bringing up his shield, catching some of the momentum of the bullet headed for Darkholme’s chest. Slowed and deflected, the round caromed from the shield to her head, and she fell without a sound.

Steve heard Kurt curse, and Kitty cry out over the comm piece in his ear, but he couldn’t worry about that at the moment. The Skull aimed his pistol at him now, a ruthless grin on his face for successfully dropping the Mutant. Steve hefted his shield higher and hissed at Kurt to stay back or he’d be another target. Bullet after bullet clanged off his shield, and he crept forward from behind it, right hand hovering over his sidearm as he waited for his own opportunity to fire. He pushed forward another step under its protection, when suddenly the shooting stopped. Cautiously he looked up, to see the Skull looking down at himself confused, pistol held loosely in one hand, a fresh clip in the other. A stain of red started spreading over his white shirt from behind his tie. Steve stepped to the desk and took the gun away from the wizened hand and tossed it across the soundstage.

The Skull twisted, wincing, trying to see over his shoulder, exposing the hole in the back of the fine wool coat. “A ricochet…?” he said, as blood bubbled on his lips and he turned to Steve once more. Faded rheumy eyes faced eyes of clear cornflower blue in a final stare, and Steve could hear Kurt’s suppressed weeping in his ear. It was time to end this. He turned away, and the Skull grabbed at his arm, and he looked back impatiently. “The game… has… only just… begun…” the old man said, more blood gurgling in his mouth, and then he slumped down over the desk, the clip clattering from his failing grasp to the floor.

Steve hurried where Darkholme lay so still on the stage floor. There was a pool of blood by her head, but not as large a one as he expected, so maybe… Her face was unmarred, so he combed through her hair looking for the wound, not caring about the blood smearing his gloves. No hole, and her skull seemed intact, with no fractures. He found a bad scalp tear a few inches above her hairline, but that seemed to be the worst of it. “A scalp wound,” he said. “Bandages.” He caught the bundle Kurt tossed from behind the camera, the young man’s tears changing from sorrow to joy, as he prayed softly for his birth mother’s well being.

Steve quickly wound the gauze around Darkholme’s red, blood soaked tresses. “Pull it together, kids, we need to get out of here, fast.” He scooped the woman up in his arms, and noticed despite himself and the situation, how good she felt in them. He stepped between the cameras with his wounded, leaving the dead behind.

Kurt hurried after him, and Kitty joined them as they passed the control booth. “I locked the channel to the Emergency Broadcast signal,” she said, her voice a little shaky. He nodded in mingled acknowledgement and encouragement, and she smiled a little in return. When they got to the shuttle, under the cover of the other Raider ships protecting the building from air and ground assault, Kitty moved to the cockpit. “Like I said, I can fly this thing, mostly,” she said.

“Mostly?” her husband teased, his voice inappropriately giddy. Steve knew the reaction well; the bone-jarring fear of watching a close comrade fall in battle often turned to nearly manic relief when the news was better than hoped for. Kitty lifted the craft, and pulled out to follow the rest of the fleet.

And now, was the worst part of fighting alongside a woman; watching over them when she was injured, and especially like now, when it was his fault she was hurt… If he hadn’t turned away just then, if he’d gotten up the shield up a little faster…

“She’ll be alright, Cap,” Kurt said, a new calm and understanding in his eyes.

“Yeah…” he said. “Sure.” He strapped her across some seats, and looked at her closely. Unconscious, without all the attitude and stress making her seem older and harsher, her face was beautiful. Classically shaped, with fine cheekbones she’d passed to her both her children. He watched her breathe, barely aware when Kurt joined Kitty in the cockpit, or what the younger people talked about for the rest of the trip.

“I thought you’d want to look after your…” Kitty said quietly.

 “He’s watching her enough for both of us,” Kurt said with a small smile.

“Really?” she said, returning his smile. “Hmm.”

* * *

In an upscale San Diego townhouse, a tall, athletic girl with wavy brown hair brought a big bowl of popcorn from the kitchen to the living room, and snuggled next to her grandpa on the couch, showing him the new peach nail polish on her toenails. Grandpa Jim most definitely wasn’t a member of the Patriot party, and spoke against President Rogers’ policies when he could get away with it. His son and daughter-in-law were often embarrassed by him, but his wealth and job gave him enough leeway to be permitted some _eccentricities_. Grandpa was a stubborn, old fashion cuss, but she loved him anyway, and spent time with him whenever her conformist parents would let her.

Today Rogers was giving a speech, and she loved the way Grandpa would spitefully skewer the President’s rhetoric. It taught her things about the way the country used to be, and the way American life was lived that she never learned from her parents or from the classroom. The old man was in fine form, and had gotten off some good zingers, when Mutants invaded the studio… Popcorn forgotten, they watched with the rest of the country, and  the world, as things were said and done that would change things forever. When the man who called himself the real Captain came on screen, Grandpa Jim sat bolt upright, so rigid with tension it scared her.

“Grandpa, what’s wrong?” she said.

Without taking his eyes off the screen, he answered, “My God, Libby. It’s him, really him! All these years, and it wasn’t… Of course, that had to be the Skull, the real Steve would never have done or said those things.” He put his face in his hands. “God, after all these years…. And he’s so young… younger than your dad is now…”

“Did you… did you know him?” Libby said.

Grandpa Jim looked up at her, “Yes,” he said simply.

 

AN: And, _dun dun duh!_ An evil cliffy I probably won’t get back to for ages and many chapters… =) I’ve got other fish to fry before I get back to Libby and her Grandpa…

[The title of this one is a deliberate twist of the famous Sentinel storyline in the X-men, “Project Wide Awake”.]

[*] Snopes.com says that this isn’t true, <http://www.snopes.com/military/notch.asp> but I didn’t find their citations definitive. For a myth, this gruesome factoid certainly has a lot of traction in military circles, and on the interwebs. In the story, Steve would probably have heard it out in the field, but wouldn’t know anyone who’d seen it happen directly (which is the very definition of an urban legend). For what it’s worth, I gave him a 1944 version of the tags, with late date tetanus shots, on the theory that he probably chewed through his tags quite a bit, and had to keep getting them reissued. (An early version, of the kind he was thinking of, can be found here, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Dog_tags.jpg under the wikipedia article about dog tags.) And in a final note on this subject, they switched to SSN’s in the late 60s, and stopped having the notch in 1970, when they switched to an embossing format, as opposed to the original letter-punch method, which was used so that the information on the tag could be impressed with a carbon on the G.I.’s medical records in the field. <http://home.att.net/~steinert/us_army_ww2_dog_tags.htm>

[**] This sounds a bit harsh, but he is a product of his time. He’s an old-fashioned (pardon the pun) social conservative (with a small “c”). From Steve’s point of view, even if there were pressing reasons at the time Jimmy was conceived to drive Jon and Jimaine apart, they’ve certainly been in no hurry to correct that since they’ve been reunited.

...ZOMG!! The future world in the ‘Heroes’ TV show on April 29, ’07 “Five Years Later” was so evocative of my AU it’s scary: ‘Rounding ‘em up, diagnostic blood tests, keeping ‘em from breeding, an underground railroad, a final solution… /shiver… [Yes, this is a dated reference, but I'm keeping it.]


	9. Ben - Robbie's Rules of Order

"Here's the dishes for your poker game, Ben," said the silver haired fox. "Mind you stay out of them until you get there." May gave him a mock stern look.

"I will," Ben promised, as he put the box in the passenger seat of the battered sedan. Straightening up he took her gently by the arms with a smile. "May Parker, have I told you lately how gorgeous you are, and how much I love you?"

May blushed prettily. "Old flirt," she said, and accepted his kiss.

A kid across the street stuck out his tongue, "Ew, old people kissing," and pedaled his bike faster to get away from the sight.

"He shouldn't knock it until he tries it," Ben teased.

"Oh hush, you. Now go on before the 'hens' get here for my bridge game."

He raised his eyebrows in mock alarm and pretended to hurry to his car door. "I better hurry, Prudence said she wants to take me home in her pocket," he said as he got behind the wheel. May followed him, and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, and then let him close the door.

"She better not. I swing a mean rolling pin." With a wave, she started for the house.

"Don't I know it!" he called out as he put on his seatbelt and backed into the street. Ben drove to Chinatown, negotiating the roads carefully so as not to draw any official attention. He stopped in front of the boarding house where Wong lived and frowned. Wong had _never_ before failed to be waiting outside for him. He parked and after a few minutes, an elderly Chinese gentleman came out to talk to Ben.

"Wong not here, now," the old man said. "He get hired by rich man in city. He move out, work on plants."

A trickle of fear went down Ben's back. "Thank you," he said, and the older man limped back to his house. Ben drove off, this time heading for Harlem, location of the weekly poker game. Wealthy people usually aligned with Shield, and if Wong was caught up with that sort of trouble, it could be dangerous for his friends.

Ben turned into the Warehouse district near the Negro ghetto and quickly pulled over to the curb. An expensive automobile stopped at the sign, and let out Wong, who carried a cardboard box with Chinese characters on the sides. The fancy car disappeared around the corner of the crumbling industrial building that was home to the game.

Before Wong could enter the building, a Shield foot patrol caught sight of him. Either there were extra patrols tonight due to the events at the TV studio yesterday, or they were early. Ben slouched low in his seat and fidgeted as he listened.

"Hey, Yellow man," one said, sounding almost jovial.

"What are you doing in Nigger territory?" the other growled, much more to the point.

"Make delivery for employer, honorable sirs," Wong said, exaggerating his accent.

"At this time of night?" the first one sounded skeptical. "It's nearly dark."

"Show us your employment card, chink," the second said.

"Here, I show my papers to you," Wong said, offering the card showing no anxiety, as usual.

The two patrolmen turned a flashlight on the card and studied it. Ben caught a look of surprise and apprehension on their faces. "... _Stark?_ " Ben thought he heard one say, and his earlier feeling of dread came back redoubled.

"This... seems to be in order," the first one said. "Mind the curfew, tonight." He handed back the card.

"Oh yes sir," Wong said, bowing repeatedly and deeply, then hurried into the building.

Ben waited until the patrol walked out of sight before leaving his car with his own offerings. He needed to tell the cell's leader what he'd seen. He started with surprise when he found Wong in the antechamber waiting for him.

"I recognized your car," the oriental said. "Go and tell him, Mr. Parker. And even if you decide you can no longer trust me, I have important news to give."

Ben nodded and opened the door. He put his box on the counter near the one already there and turned to the grim faced black man with the gray hair. "There's a problem, Robbie."

Robbie Robertson frowned. "I hate it when you start a conversation like that, Ben. What is it?"

Ben took a breath. "Wong's in the outer room... he may be compromised. His landlord said he moved to a rich man's employ, and a fancy car dropped him off. When he showed the patrol his card, I thought they said 'Stark'."

"Damn," Robbie's mouth compressed into a stern line. "Well, he's got something to tell us or he wouldn't be here. If he had reported us, wouldn't Shield be here? Bring him in."

Ben opened the door and gestured at Wong who came in, putting his box of Chinese takeout with the other food. Wong turned to face the others. "Besides the events on the television that has everyone talking, something else has changed that might help the Underground. Please let me explain it to you."

"You know the stakes, Wong," Robbie said. "You might not have any family at risk, but we do. I don't know about Ben, but I'd kill to protect mine from those sadistic bastards."

"Entirely understandable," Wong said. "And I wouldn't blame you, but I do ask that you hear me out first." Robbie sighed at sat at the card table, nodding at Ben to do the same, and waved at Wong to continue. "Thank you. Not long ago a Mutant known as Legacy came to the city. I told you of his visit last month. What I didn't know at the time was there was another person following Legacy, who observed my conversation with the Mutant. There have been reports of an armored man, but no mention of him in any official channel, correct?"

Robbie nodded, and Wong continued. "That is because he does not work for Shield. He rightly deduced that I might have contact with the Underground. I denied it, but he had recorded my talk with Legacy; evidence enough to earn myself a bullet if leaked to the authorities. He decided to offer his trust to me, for he stands _against_ Shield and what it represents." Wong paused with a faint smile. "His name is Howard Stark."

"What! Wong, have you gone crazy?" Ben said.

Wong raised his hand, "His father Anthony is an abusive drunk not welcome in his own home. More than anyone else, young Howard knows what evil this regime creates. Listening to his father beat his mother with impunity has not made him likely to follow Anthony Stark's footsteps. After telling me his motivations, he told me what he could do to help us. What we need to be more effective in our operations is what he has in abundance; money, materials, and the ability to put a legitimate face on our dodgier activities."

Robbie looked thoughtful as the oriental man spoke earnestly. "The basement of this building is filled with a working and independent press, a rare thing in this world, and one we all too seldom have a chance to run. The writing is easy, typesetting is just time consuming, but paper and ink for a free paper of rebellion costs us money that is hard to acquire. Jonah Jameson keeps you running the presses of the Bugle because you're a black man, but you're more than qualified to be an editor, if you had the resources that Jonah takes for granted. With Stark's help we could buy fresh ink and rolls of new paper, instead of pinching cast offs from the Bugle."

Robbie shook his head. "Too much of a risk. Well-connected people like that are too entangled with Shield. There's too much at stake..."

Wong looked at him sadly. "Do you trust me, old friend? The point is he knows that Shield judges people on stereotypes and bigoted assumptions, instead of looking at the person as a unique individual. Isn't that what you're doing here?"

Robbie winced. Ben snuck a longing glance at the counter holding the food, and said "What do you think he should do, other than shoot you?"

Wong quirked his mouth slightly. "Hear him out. Find out what kind of man he is."

Ben sat up straight, "You didn't bring him _here_ , did you?"

Wong shrugged. "A man who can make a seven foot tall suit of silver armor invisible hardly needs my help to track me. I swore I would not betray you, and I haven't, but I could not stop him from following me if that is what he chose to do."

Near the door, Arsenal shimmered into view. Robbie raised a snub-nosed pistol concealed in the table, but the armored man just crossed his arms and waited. After a tense moment, while Ben contemplated the best place to hide if there were shots fired, the graying black man lowered the revolver. "I suppose that suit is bullet proof," he said, putting the gun away.

"'Spose it is," came a young man's voice. He lifted the dome helm off and looked at the men in the room. "But I'm not. Call me Howie." His eyes were blue, and his dark hair matted and tousled from close confinement, but despite the less than perfect hairstyle, this was clearly Howard Stark the second, much publicized prince of the city.

The young man took off his right glove and held his hand out. "Sorry to barge in here, Mr. Robertson, but I've been trying to make contact with the Underground for months, and Wong was the first opening I've ever found." Robbie slowly met his grip and allowed Howie to shake his hand.

Ben watched Howie for any hint of condescension or disdain aimed at Robbie or the rest of his social inferiors and saw none. He always trusted his gut when evaluating people and he liked this kid. His sincere clarity reminded Ben of his lost nephew. He stuck his own hand out, "Ben Parker. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Stark."

Robbie gave him a curious look, knowing that Ben seldom warmed up to strangers so quickly. Especially after what happened to young Peter.

"Howie, please," the younger man said. "You say 'Mr. Stark', and I look for my father, and the last thing I ever want is to be is like him." The resentful anger in his voice was clear to the older men. "When Legacy retrieved his woman from Fisk, I had to decide what side I was on. I like to think I'd have chosen the side of justice and mercy even if my bastard of a father wasn't on the other side."

"Curious that you hate him so much," Robbie said. "Most boys idolize their fathers."

"Most fathers aren't wife beating drunks," Howie said. "He wasn't around. Mostly my mom and the butler, Edwin Jarvis raised me. That's the main reason I turned out the way I did."

"That tin suit looks awfully uncomfortable," Ben said.

"It's air-conditioned, but it's mostly just awkward," Howard said. He pointed at a wall of exposed cinder blocks. "Is that a sturdy wall?" he asked Robbie.

"Huh? Well... I guess so, why?" Robbie said.

Howie put his back to the cinder blocks and grapples shot from the armor and sunk part way into the bricks. With a pneumatic hiss, the front of the suit moved away from the back and opened along the middle seam, allowing Howie to step out the boots attached to the armor. He was in a tight fitting body suit, and looked... undressed and vulnerable, like a man in a diving suit. Their visitor was so young, Ben noticed, barely 18.

"He's just a kid, Robbie," he said. Howie gave him a look of mingled thanks and chagrin, and Ben couldn't help it, he started laughing. Wong smiled, and Robbie began to chuckle.

Howie threw himself in a chair and smiled ruefully. "Yeah, I'm a kid. But someone has to do something, damnit! It's a sick society that rewards murderers, rapists, and thugs and I count my father in at least two of these categories." He scowled, "My advantages are my parents are rich, and I'm seldom asked about the funds I use. Also, my Grandfather was a scientist for the Allies in the last War. I adapted this armor from my namesake's technology."

Robbie just gave him a stern expression. Howie leaned forward, "Forgive me for saying so but you don't appear to be swimming in cash. That, I can help supply." Robbie frowned, and looked like he was going to object, and the young man continued. "Untraceable funds, sir." He must have guessed right because Robbie nodded.

"And in return?" Robbie said. "What do you want?"

"A chance to get hits in on Shield and information on their abuses that I can stop. And mostly... include me in any communication channels to the Mutants. I know Legacy's lady, Dion. I'd like to know how she's holding up after getting away from Fisk. And I like the kid, Legacy I mean. He may be German and weird... ok, a lot weird, but he's good people."

"I concur with your opinion of him," Wong said. "But we don't know anything about this woman. Legacy only said to me he was in the city on personal business."

Howie scratched his matted head. "I'm not sure I know for sure. He said he'd never met her, and had only dreamed of her... but at the same time, they acted like they'd known each other forever. What I do know is she is... was... Fisk's personal hostess, and I'd seen her at Fisk's parties. She was a 'comfort Mutant', and Shield's records verified her status. That's all I know, except that Wolverine himself picked them up, and I overheard him say something about Legacy's parents, as if he knew them. Oh, and before that, Legacy was in on the Carrier attack."

Robbie looked over at Ben, who shrugged and gave a crooked smile. "I think we should give him a chance."

The cell leader frowned, "It just smells like Noblesse oblige on his part."

Ben shrugged again. "He has a lot of power, between the money, connections and the armor, and you know what I always say..." He looked at his friends with an expectant smile.

Robbie and Wong looked at each other and with resigned sighs, recited in not-quite chorus, "With great power comes great responsibility."

"Way to sound enthusiastic, men," Ben said sarcastically, joining in on their chuckles.

"That's a good motto," Howie said.

"One I've had it for a long time," Ben said. He got up and broke into the paper plates. "I'm hungry, by the way," and he handed plates around. "I used to say it to my nephew." A wave of pain came over him, and his head dropped momentarily. He took a breath to stave off the sorrow and started to load up his plate with the various foods on hand. There was soul food from Mrs. Robertson, Wong's Chinese takeout, and the typically middle-class White American cuisine from his May. "Young Pete's parents died when he was little, so me and my wife May raised him." Ben sat with his food and kept talking as he ate. "Pete was a great kid, bookish, polite, and in love with the girl next door. But who could blame him?"

He pulled out his wallet and handed Howie a battered photo of Mary Jane Watson and her 'Tiger'; a young Peter Parker. "That's Mary Jane. They wanted to join the Resistance, but I told them to wait until they were older." He sighed as the other sat with their own plates. "They couldn't wait, I guess, and made contact with people who weren't nearly as careful as we are. The proof of that is, we're still around, and they're in custody, or dead."

He took a drink from his coffee thermos, avoiding everyone's eyes. "The last time we saw them, they were going to a meeting in a townhouse basement and Shield raided them. Some were arrested, but there was an explosion, and the kids... and a lot of other promising young people just never came home." He choked up and Robbie patted him on the back.

In the uncomfortable silence that followed, Howie looked at Wong. "I suppose I can guess why you joined the Resistance. Shield's harsh on minorities."

Wong nodded, "In part. But it has more to do with my old Master. It is for him that I fight."

Ben lifted his head. Wong had never told them what specific reason he was in on the struggle.

"Over twenty years ago, my Master, Stephen Strange was a medical doctor and a surgeon of the highest caliber, although his personal life was less than stellar. He'd lost the fine touch of his hands in a drunken car accident and with that his very reason for living. After searching for a way to recover, he found himself in a remote location in the Himalayan Mountains. It was there I worked for the Ancient One as generations of my fathers had done before me. He was a mystic of great power and unthinkably old."

He looked at Robbie and Ben. "I never told you because it still feels like a failure on my part. But seeing my Master's shade has restored my motivation. I watched the Ancient One work with this broken playboy, and brought him to realize he had skills beyond those of a surgeon, skills that could help far more people than he could hope for as a physician. There were obstacles before him, but in time, Doctor Strange succeeded the Ancient One as the Sorcerer Supreme of Earth. He settled here, in Greenwich, with myself as his faithful servant." Wong but his hand on his chest and bowed.

"He had an apprentice of his own, a fair young lady from another realm, named Clea, when Shield came for him. My Master held them off for days, their weapons unable to damage the Sanctum Sanctorum through his shielding. When his strength was exhausted, he told Mistress Clea and I to flee, giving me the Eye of Agamotto for safe-keeping." His eyes focused on a distant point, Wong's voice became pensive and hollow. "His glamour got me away from the mansion, and I turned to see a last mortar shell hit the building... and it just... collapsed. It didn't blow up so much as it _imploded_ , leaving an empty lot scattered with bricks and stones."

Wong sighed. "And so it remains to this day. People keep saying they're going to claim the lot and build anew, but the projects never get started." A small smile curled his lips. "Maybe it's haunted by my Master's ghost."

Howie chuckled, "From what I saw the other day, that's a good possibility."

Robbie looked over at Howie, "I suppose you want to hear my story now."

"If you want to tell me, sir. My presumption is that much the same as I said to Wong; anger at the way Shield treats minorities."

"The way they treat my people is one thing, but like my friends I have a personal beef, a family beef," Robbie said. He raised his head and gave the young man a challenging look, but Howie just looked attentively back at him. "I had two sons. My first son Henry died as an infant. I suspected, but couldn't prove that he didn't get the inoculations he was due. There's a history of that around here. A couple of years later we had Randy," a faint smile crossed his face, "a fine boy, really fine. He was getting ready to graduate High School, and we were walking down a street when this... monster rushed out of a cross street and grabbed him."

Robbie covered his eyes with his hand and then rubbed his face while he got his composure back. "The papers said he wasn't a Mutant, _per se_. Lonnie Lincoln was an albino Negro, who called himself Tombstone. He was a hulking figure, over six foot tall, and he filed his teeth and nails into points to add to the strangeness of his appearance. He intimidated his victims, and bossed a gang of street hoodlums that worked for him. They had just hit an armored car, and the job had gone south so he was on the run."

His gaze bored into a wall, seeing only events long ago. "Shield patrols were hard on his heels, and why he grabbed Randy as a hostage." His lips twisted bitterly, "If he thought that Shield would be concerned about the welfare of a young black man, Tombstone was wrong. The patrol commander ordered Randy to get out of the way, and he tried. My boy was a strong young man, but Tombstone was stronger. As Randy struggled, the thug nearly twisted his head off, and the commander ran out of patience."

Ben handed him a can of beer, and Robbie pulled the tab and took a long drink. "He ordered his men to fire, and they did; killing Tombstone... and Randy, who was in the way. They clubbed me back when I tried to get to my son. He was still breathing, holding on to life. I never got a chance... instead, the last words he heard were those Shield bastards calling him a stupid filthy Nigger." He finished off the can.

"They let us bury him, and while we were still mourning, my family was fined thousands of dollars for Randy's 'interference in Shield business', and my name put on a watch list. I have a good relationship with my boss, J. Jonah Jameson, and I was due a prominent promotion... an unusually good promotion for a black man. He had to withdraw it after this happened, but he hated to do it." He shook his head.

"Instead, I got 'demoted' to press foreman, ensuring I'd stay in the basement with the press machinery. It sounded bad and Shield was pleased Jameson chastised the 'uppity Negro'. Truth is though, I make more in wages hourly then my old salary was, and J.J. lets me get all the overtime I want, as long as it doesn't become double overtime. The fine is paid off, and I'm not being followed around anymore... but it doesn't make up for the loss of my boy."

Robbie sighed, "So now we have told each other our stories, what now?" He gave Howie a hard look.

"We join forces," the younger Stark said. "You can do things that I'm too closely watched to do, and I give you the resources to do them. Wong said you had functional press. Can I see it?"

"I guess," Robbie said. Ben followed the two men to the hidden stairs to the basement. "A few years back, Jameson bought the Bugle a new press, and let me arrange to haul off the old one for the metal. These things are supposed to be permanently disabled when they're scrapped, but I knew enough about the old beast to be able to repair it when my guys got the pieces back here."

"Awesome!" Howie looked around the complex machinery filling the huge basement. "A full-fledged news press. Can't they identity the typeface?"

"Well, that's the thing," Robbie said with a grim smile. "J. Jonah didn't like the font that came with the new press, so he kept the old one." Robbie opened drawers filled with rows of backwards lettered lead slugs. "So we have the new set right here."

"Nice," Howie said. The three men climbed back up to the ground floor. "And all you need are the funds to run it? That, at the very least, I can help with right away." Howie went to the silent armor and opened a recessed compartment, and pulled out a few thick rolls of cash that he handed to Robbie. "Small, unmarked bills, that my butler Jarvis took out of the mansion's operating budget. He's a good man, Mr. Robertson... I trust him like the father I _wish_ I had."

"So what shall we publish?" Ben said. "The Heli-Carrier went down recently. They've been saying the Mutants murdered all the people aboard."

Robbie shook his head, "I've got Ham radio transcripts from that; they held Shield off for a while and then took off to allow evacuations. It's true personnel did die in the Gulf, but it's not true that the Raiders didn't give them a chance." The black man put a finger at his graying temple, thinking. "We'll print a photo that came to my possession recently."

He opened the secret drawer in the card table, and pushed his gun aside to pull out a picture of Mayor Fisk, flailing his arms in mid-flight on the all-too brief journey from a city lamppost and the street. "What do you think? 'Fisk Discovers Gravity!'" That got a chuckle from them.

"I'd read it!" Howie said. "And I was there in person!"

Wong passed Robbie a sheaf of papers from between the boxes holding the takeout. "The Stark's butler wrote this, an essay of how he'd seen the real Captain American in England during the War; and how he feels that the costumed man in the studio was the genuine article."

"Eye witness accounts are always good," Robbie said. "The Patriot party line is that both men in that broadcast were imposters, including our supposed President who appeared to admit to being the Skull... But your average citizen doesn't believe that. There was no sign he was fake at the start of the speech; they made a big deal out of it being his first public outing in a year. An essay like this..." his voice trailed off as he read the piece. "This is very well written and it will do just fine."

"Here's something that might merit a little ink," Howie said. "Sometimes when my father visits, he takes phone calls on Shield business. Last night it seemed that no sooner had the Skull's body cooled, that the regional leaders held together by the force of his personality alone started grumbling. Sergei Kravinoff clashes with the Mandarin, Von Doom doesn't play well with others, and T'Challa of Africa never wanted to be under Shield's sway in the first place."

Robbie shook his head again. "If that was in confidence, they would have a mighty short list of suspects for who leaked it. It might be good news that the Shield monolith is weakening, but it's best that we wait for other sources for this info, that can't be traced back to you. So we have three big, breaking stories and the usual content? _The Liberty Bell_ is due for a special edition!"

"Hear, hear," Ben said, raising a can of beer.

_"The Liberty Bell?"_ Howie said. "That's a great name."

"A good name, yes," Robbie said, "But it's a little hard to distribute. Would you be interested in a copy?" The sly smile on Robbie's face told Ben that his friend was beginning to warm up to the boy.

"Ok," Howie said, smiling himself, knowing it was a joke.

Robbie handed him a card for the Bellum fishery. "Have your butler order fish from the docks this Friday from this company. Specify how many and what breed of fish, and how many wrappings on each fish. They come with one copy per layer, per fish. It's good, fresh fish, wrapped in unsold newspapers, but when we do a print run here we donate every copy to the fishery."

Howie burst out laughing. "That's hilarious! You can't exactly sell copies of _The Bell_ , but what a way to prevent any muckety muck from noticing, or even getting near a copy!" His expression sobered, "And exposing just the right people to the information it holds."

Ben nodded. "I always get at least double wrapped. May doesn't like to read a paper stained with scales and fish blood. I get more wrappings if I want to share it around my neighborhood, like with this edition."

A lull in the conversation led to Wong straightening up the food containers. "If we are done eating, perhaps we can start playing?" Ben brought out a deck of cards while Robbie got the racks of poker chips.

"Heh, I just gave you all the money I brought with me," Howie said, patting down the snug body suit he wore as if looking for pockets.

Robbie smiled like a predator. "Oh, don't worry. We'll spot you a set of chips, this time..."

_Fresh meat!_ Ben thought. "We'll cut for first deal."

"Who taught you how to play, young sir?" Wong said, as he fluidly shuffled the deck of cards. He set the deck down and cut to a seven.

"Jarvis," Howie said. "Let's just see if my play stands up to a group like this." He cut to a jack and smiled.

"Maybe next time he can join us," Robbie cut to a trey and made a face.

Ben reached over and after a brief hesitation, cut to an ace. He gathered the deck to begin dealing.

Howie's face began to show a little sensible nervousness, "Depending on how I do here, I may just send him instead..."

 

[A/N] The title, of course, is a play on "Robert's Rules of Order" a system used to organize formal meetings.

This is Ben's POV... we HAVE to have his catchphrase!

            "'With great power comes great responsibility',

            That's the catchphrase of old Uncle Ben.

            If you missed it, don't worry, they'll say the line,

            Again and again and again."

                        - Weird Al Yankovic's _"Ode to a Superhero"_ (YouTube).


End file.
